My Web Manifesto

Control, Community, Peace of Mind

I will be turning 20 years old as of 2024, on the cusp of starting university and fully joining the adult world. I look around and feel like the world is falling apart, everything about the future is uncertain. I look to the internet for community and comfort, but what I find is that it too stands on increasingly uncertain feet: paywalled articles, ads on every surface, social medias making unpopular changes, algorithms dictating everything. The ability to customize your profile is nearly lost, kids are censoring their speech.

I am here to gain back control of my online activities, at least in some part. In the world we live in, agency and the ability to shape your own space are incredibly important, and we should take every opportunity we get. While my main social media, Tumblr, does have more customization options than other sites, even offering the option to code your own theme, making my own website (even through a host like neocities) assures that my presence won't vanish fully if Automattic one day decides that they're done trying to keep it alive while it continues to hemorrhage money. It also lets me create a place where all of my thoughts and interests that I want to share with the world are a few clicks away, instead of getting buried under reblogs and newer posts.

My only experience with online social circles not centered on major social medias was Hunbrony - a Hungarian My Little Pony community that I hung around in 2016, consisting of a blogspot blog and a forum, the latter of which I was too shy to use. I even submitted fanfiction to it, which probably lives on in the minds of its users as the worst thing they have ever read. Oh, well. I was 12. The more adult members of it participated in picnics and meetups, looking back it was a very thight knit place that I only watched as an outsider. To this day I credit their My Little Pony subtitles with pushing me to learn English.
I didn't know how special it is when I saw it. The site still exists, and some of the same people are active and putting out fanfiction to this day. While I'm no longer interested in the cartoon, I still have a lot of respect for the site's admins (partially for putting up with 12 years old me and her 500 word ficlet)

The Indie web inspires wonder in my opinion, in a way that twitter, and even most tumblr pages don't. It's a place where pure creativity runs loose, and no one really cares what people say about them or their artistic skills. (Html is a form of art in my opinion, if I can be pretentious for a second.) Ever since I was a child I've wanted to learn to code, though my sight was set more on video games as opposed to websites. When I look at this community, although I am not yet a part of it socially speaking, I see vibrant gardens tended to by caring hands, and the vibrant potential of people like me who have just come here for the first time. I have a lot to learn, but I am eager to stay, if I can spare the time and dedication.

I don't want to return to the 90's web fully, there's many positives to the way we do things now as well. The increased social awareness and push for activism is good, I just don't like that it's everyone saying everything all of the time regardless of expertise. Your online presence used to not be your platform or pedestal, it was your quaint little cottage in a tiny village. Overtime, the norm became to live in big city apartment complexes (centralised social medias) with thin walls, where every sound you make can be heard by your neighbours. A lot of conflit could be prevented if people went back to tending to their online gardens and writing their diaries, as opposed to seeking out the masses with every word they say. You should seek companionship among your fellow villagers, in the small, tight knit communities that smaller sites provide. This is something that is done well by tumblr, though occasionally posts do break containtment, unleashing angry strangers on posts intended for my "village."

We need online "villages" that are not always exposed to every single person alive who speaks your language(s). Contrary to popular belief, choosing who to surround yourself with doesn't immediately create an "echo chamber," and you don't owe a debate to everyone who comes into your town square to disagree with you. The vastness of the internet has created people who will outright say things that they used to hit people with (ban)hammers for. Algorithms LOVE outrage, so this will always be encouraged. This is bad for everyone.

I know that a single site will not change the world, not even the entirey of neocities will. The best thing an individual can do, is protect their privacy with adblockers like Ublock, install firefox, maintain their anonimity, and take steps towards a calmer, happier internet.

I don't know how organised this was. With all this being said, have a look through my page! I am a begginer at html, but I am slowly learning. Don't forget to enable desktop mode if you're on your phone browser!