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I was there. It was fun, it was a fad. The web was quite playful back then. Many of us made websites just for the heck of it, it wasn’t super commercial. MySpac
by cpach 2y ago
I was there. It was fun, it was a fad. The web was quite playful back then. Many of us made websites just for the heck of it, it wasn’t super commercial. MySpace, which came later, was similar with regards to aesthetics. Some computer magazines also had that “GeoCities look”. Alien Skin Software and their Photoshop plugins was all the rage.
Internet as of today is, generally speaking, more visually polished. On platforms like Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/Bluesky/etc the users have very little influence over the layout/typography. The style is cleaner, but there’s less room for personal expression.
- kchr 2y ago> Alien Skin Software and their Photoshop plugins was all the rage. Not to mention Kai's Power Tools, and the other plugins by Kai Kruse!
- selimthegrim 2y agoNeocities is still a thing I think
- jauntywundrkind 2y agoMaybe it was a fad. Maybe. But I think it perhaps maybe expressed a real itch and one that's not been well served since. It's trite cynical & limited to just chalk this era up as a moment in time. There's a lot of good reasons to believe it so, to be fair, but we have done so so so little to reenable & reunleash these chords that were struck in humanity again. The multimedia possibility of this all has been dwarfed by applianceized anti-usst software since, and little has tried to pierce the veil & enable deep user adoption, especially with regards to connected internet-centric experiences. There's so many reasons to be dark & bad about but they all miss that we have tried so little since. We have been extremely well served by massified consumerized super platforms. Trying to beget agency hasn't been a longstanding work of many.