2023-07-16

Adding my signal to the ocean of noise

I recently fell into a rabbithole of the ‘old’ internet. The era defined by personal websites, blogs, webrings, niche chat forums and the like. It felt oddly personal.

I was born after the turn of the millennium. I don’t have that much idea of the truly ancient; dial-up was definitely gone in the UK by the time I have the first memories of the ‘family’ computer (although I more strongly remember when we got an LCD screen to replace the chunky CRT box). I got my first laptop in (I think) 2011. I didn’t use it much.

I absolutely cannot claim to be part of the old era, mysteriously it evokes some kind of weird vicarious nostalgia in me. To my generation, which has consumed most of its ‘content’ (while I used to hate that term, it is a useful catch-all) on social media sites and mobile apps (remember 9GAG and iFunny?), it’s different. Gone are the cozy, whitespaced, round-cornered, design-‘philosophy’-driven interfaces of the multi-billion dollar corporations. The only adverts you’ll see are pixel banners to install Netscape Navigator.

And I like it. So, that’s why this blog exists. I want what they have, and what once was.

It’s 2023 and I don’t want a reality check. I want a cool blog because my own corner of the internet is an important concept to me. That’s it. And yes, perhaps I’m failing as a writer to articulate my opinions properly. There’s some unexplainable part of my brain that really likes this idea.

However, I’m aware much of what I write is going to be meaningless word salad. I expect the vast majority of people will find my writing abhorrent. But it’s my word salad, and I get to choose the dressing.