5 ms·

I was just thinking to myself about how much the internet was lacking in self-important esoteric gibberish. I am unsurprised to see it came from the same person

I was just thinking to myself about how much the internet was lacking in self-important esoteric gibberish. I am unsurprised to see it came from the same person as "A Website to Destroy All Websites". I am especially befuddled by all the comments stating "This is how the web used to be!"; no it wasn't, and I can only imagine those who think so collate their view of web history purely through what others say on Mastodon and Twitter (who in turn probably constructed their view of the time from the twelfth or so chinese whisper down the line of various blogs and manifestos).

akoboldfrying 10mo ago
Agree. It reads like something an LLM would generate in response to the prompt "Edgy dystopian gloom about the state of the modern web" if you kept replying "Edgier!" until it made everything lowercase.
- TeMPOraL 10mo ago
  Nah, LLMs do a better job. This is clearly human.
vintagedave 10mo ago
I feel this is a slightly cruel comment. It’s a website of creativity, very well executed. Also, if you read the text, it is right. Some of the presentation (such as the inverted / mirrored square) is pure art. In an admirable sense: art. While I get the commentary — that bit reminded me of House of Leaves which has been criticized for the same thing — there’s a real human behind this, who obviously cares deeply about the issues they’re communicating about (and has the skill to do so quite incredibly.) Sometimes I wonder, in the ease of critique, what it’s like for the anonymous person on the other end, and I don’t feel good here. I feel like your comment doesn’t quite account for the humanity of someone else, nor of someone doing something with passion.
- boca_honey 10mo ago
  >someone doing something with passion. I'd agree if the site covered some history, shared recipes, or even just ranted about the author's favorite movies. But this guy is just trash-talking the entire internet. "the website has changed. it twists facts to fiction, reality to rubbish, gold into dirt." ... and so on. If you're going to be cruel, you might get some cruel feedback.
- derangedHorse 10mo ago
  > Sometimes I wonder, in the ease of critique, what it’s like for the anonymous person on the other end Here's a better look at how the "anonymous person on the other end" sees things [1]: > “i’m always polite to chat gpt so it remembers me later ” you are going to die from water-poison-related typhoid in the Great American Megadesert after a particularly nasty heat surge evaporates the rest of the drinkable rations. you will be buried in the sand. [1] https://bsky.app/profile/strange.website/post/3m33mnmcyys2t https://bsky.app/profile/strange.website/post/3m33mnmcyys2t
  - Biganon 10mo ago
    Yeah they do sound insufferable alright.
- isdjjwjdjwndn 10mo ago
  [dead]
boca_honey 10mo ago
Exactly. Have you noticed that most of these 'weird web' sites don't actually talk about anything besides the web itself? Every other 'indie web' site I stumble upon is just about the indie web.... or worse, just a list of links pointing to other similar sites. There’s no real value here. No new info, no original content. Just clunky web design and rants about 'social media bad.' That’s not how the web actually was. Everyone used to bring something to the table, instead of just talking in circles about the table itself.
- GaryBluto 10mo ago
  You've captured my thoughts better than I could. It feels very much like these projects are cargo cults. The strange (and always off-feeling) attempts to recreate badly-written Geocities websites (out of all the aspects of the 2000s internet to recreate, why such a narrow and dull target?) that are posted here feel very much like how the Melanesians built fake airstrips and conducted pseudo-military drills to attract "cargo", which is in this case is a confused and distorted concept of the "old web".
- peterldowns 10mo ago
  Haven't updated it in a while but here's my attempt at bringing something to the table, you might find it interesting. https://freezine.xyz/ https://freezine.xyz/
- manuelmoreale 10mo ago
  You are clearly not browsing enough of these “weird web” sites if that’s your take. Or the only ones you’re clicking on are the ones that are posted here on HN. Try search something on https://wiby.me https://wiby.me for example and then tell me if all you get are people writing about the web.
  - dandelionv1bes 10mo ago
    Haven’t seen Wiby before but it’s fantastic, thank you.
    - 10mo ago
noduerme 10mo ago
What's wrong with some retro-lite doom bait? When I was a kid in the 80s there were fake 1950s diners everywhere, with jukeboxes and malt machines, bubble gum music and greasy hamburgers. They were a cheap nostalgic simulacrum of something not originally all that special. That was because there were still a lot of people alive who were teenagers in the 1950s and wanted to show their kids or grandkids something kinda-like the world they grew up in. It drifted further and further from reality along with the people who inhabited that world, who grew old and died. Now we just have faux 50s diners and a lot of old movies to look at.
supriyo-biswas 10mo ago
Apart from the sibling comments that makes some excellent points, the commercial aspect of any endeavor will almost always coexist, or in some cases, overshadow the "artisanal" aspect that the "indieweb" people seem to be going for. Even if we completely deleted the Internet and started from scratch, or any other technology for that matter, enterprising people will want to use the technology to deliver some sort of value to society in return for goods and services. This is both a good thing for the people in question, as they can be paid for something they love doing, addresses previously thought of use cases (such as online shopping or video streaming, in the case of the Internet) that people would be willing to pay for, and leads to commercial exchanges with many positive downstream effects (internet providers laying infrastructure, companies investing in software, and associated employment for many people). Certainly, I owe all of my jobs and many of the friendships that I continue beyond their meatspace boundaries, precisely because the Internet and commercial services on top of it that enabled it to happen. Without this aspect, the Internet would likely be left in a niche, which makes it far less useful to most. This is the primary reason why projects like Gemini, etc. will not have much success, because it is intentionally designed to be not useful to most people; and guess what? You can always make plain HTML/CSS websites and set up a Matrix server for your buddies to talk to; you don't need a new protocol and sing praises about the indieweb to make this happen.
asukachikaru 10mo ago
His portfolio / blog site is aesthetically my favorite blog of all time out there. https://henry.codes/ https://henry.codes/

akoboldfrying 10mo ago

Agree. It reads like something an LLM would generate in response to the prompt "Edgy dystopian gloom about the state of the modern web" if you kept replying "Edgier!" until it made everything lowercase.

TeMPOraL 10mo ago
Nah, LLMs do a better job. This is clearly human.

vintagedave 10mo ago

I feel this is a slightly cruel comment. It’s a website of creativity, very well executed. Also, if you read the text, it is right. Some of the presentation (such as the inverted / mirrored square) is pure art. In an admirable sense: art. While I get the commentary — that bit reminded me of House of Leaves which has been criticized for the same thing — there’s a real human behind this, who obviously cares deeply about the issues they’re communicating about (and has the skill to do so quite incredibly.) Sometimes I wonder, in the ease of critique, what it’s like for the anonymous person on the other end, and I don’t feel good here. I feel like your comment doesn’t quite account for the humanity of someone else, nor of someone doing something with passion.

boca_honey 10mo ago
>someone doing something with passion. I'd agree if the site covered some history, shared recipes, or even just ranted about the author's favorite movies. But this guy is just trash-talking the entire internet. "the website has changed. it twists facts to fiction, reality to rubbish, gold into dirt." ... and so on. If you're going to be cruel, you might get some cruel feedback.
derangedHorse 10mo ago
> Sometimes I wonder, in the ease of critique, what it’s like for the anonymous person on the other end Here's a better look at how the "anonymous person on the other end" sees things [1]: > “i’m always polite to chat gpt so it remembers me later ” you are going to die from water-poison-related typhoid in the Great American Megadesert after a particularly nasty heat surge evaporates the rest of the drinkable rations. you will be buried in the sand. [1] https://bsky.app/profile/strange.website/post/3m33mnmcyys2t https://bsky.app/profile/strange.website/post/3m33mnmcyys2t
- Biganon 10mo ago
  Yeah they do sound insufferable alright.
isdjjwjdjwndn 10mo ago
[dead]

boca_honey 10mo ago

Exactly. Have you noticed that most of these 'weird web' sites don't actually talk about anything besides the web itself? Every other 'indie web' site I stumble upon is just about the indie web.... or worse, just a list of links pointing to other similar sites. There’s no real value here. No new info, no original content. Just clunky web design and rants about 'social media bad.' That’s not how the web actually was. Everyone used to bring something to the table, instead of just talking in circles about the table itself.

GaryBluto 10mo ago
You've captured my thoughts better than I could. It feels very much like these projects are cargo cults. The strange (and always off-feeling) attempts to recreate badly-written Geocities websites (out of all the aspects of the 2000s internet to recreate, why such a narrow and dull target?) that are posted here feel very much like how the Melanesians built fake airstrips and conducted pseudo-military drills to attract "cargo", which is in this case is a confused and distorted concept of the "old web".
peterldowns 10mo ago
Haven't updated it in a while but here's my attempt at bringing something to the table, you might find it interesting. https://freezine.xyz/ https://freezine.xyz/
manuelmoreale 10mo ago
You are clearly not browsing enough of these “weird web” sites if that’s your take. Or the only ones you’re clicking on are the ones that are posted here on HN. Try search something on https://wiby.me https://wiby.me for example and then tell me if all you get are people writing about the web.
- dandelionv1bes 10mo ago
  Haven’t seen Wiby before but it’s fantastic, thank you.
  - 10mo ago

noduerme 10mo ago

What's wrong with some retro-lite doom bait? When I was a kid in the 80s there were fake 1950s diners everywhere, with jukeboxes and malt machines, bubble gum music and greasy hamburgers. They were a cheap nostalgic simulacrum of something not originally all that special. That was because there were still a lot of people alive who were teenagers in the 1950s and wanted to show their kids or grandkids something kinda-like the world they grew up in. It drifted further and further from reality along with the people who inhabited that world, who grew old and died. Now we just have faux 50s diners and a lot of old movies to look at.

supriyo-biswas 10mo ago

Apart from the sibling comments that makes some excellent points, the commercial aspect of any endeavor will almost always coexist, or in some cases, overshadow the "artisanal" aspect that the "indieweb" people seem to be going for. Even if we completely deleted the Internet and started from scratch, or any other technology for that matter, enterprising people will want to use the technology to deliver some sort of value to society in return for goods and services. This is both a good thing for the people in question, as they can be paid for something they love doing, addresses previously thought of use cases (such as online shopping or video streaming, in the case of the Internet) that people would be willing to pay for, and leads to commercial exchanges with many positive downstream effects (internet providers laying infrastructure, companies investing in software, and associated employment for many people). Certainly, I owe all of my jobs and many of the friendships that I continue beyond their meatspace boundaries, precisely because the Internet and commercial services on top of it that enabled it to happen. Without this aspect, the Internet would likely be left in a niche, which makes it far less useful to most. This is the primary reason why projects like Gemini, etc. will not have much success, because it is intentionally designed to be not useful to most people; and guess what? You can always make plain HTML/CSS websites and set up a Matrix server for your buddies to talk to; you don't need a new protocol and sing praises about the indieweb to make this happen.

asukachikaru 10mo ago

His portfolio / blog site is aesthetically my favorite blog of all time out there. https://henry.codes/ https://henry.codes/