Just a couple days ago I learned about the indie web and got heavily invested in it. For those unfamiliar with the term, it’s basically a web that’s a people-focused alternative to the corporate web of today.

Lately I’ve been doing some digging on this cool new thing I just learned about, called the IndieWeb. For those unfamiliar, it’s a people-focused web that serves as an alternative to the bland and lifeless corporate web of today.

Most modern websites nowadays have very similar designs as they all strive towards a more modern and sleek look. Because of that, most sites end up looking very bland and plain, lacking any sort of personality to it which makes it feel… Lifeless. Websites nowadays are filled to the brim with ads while forcing you to accept cookies which basically tracks your internet activity. The data collected is then sold to corporations that can use this to figure out how to market their products or whatever more effectively. People are losing control of their own privacy because of this and now that AI has risen in popularity significantly over the last couple of years, the internet is filled with an innumerable number of bots and ads and dead websites.

The difference is extremely obvious when you look at websites from the 2000s or so when the internet was still extremely new to people and free of any corporations. It goes by a bunch of other names too like the small web or whatnot but it all means the same thing. It’s just a relatively niche community of independent and personal websites. The indie web is full of beautiful and personal websites filled with life and just by looking at them you can tell that the people who made them put a piece of themselves into those websites. Just by taking a glimpse of the websites you can sort of guess the type of person the creator of the site is. Their interests, hobbies, obsessions among other such things are usually displayed on these sites and each site has a completely different look and feel and this display of individualism and uniqueness is just amazing.

Making a website is also very easy if all you want to do is just put some text and colors on the screen and tools such as Neocities is a great way for a complete beginner to make a website even if they don’t know how to code. I’m genuinely surprised to see that most of the people that made videos about the IndieWeb don’t even know how to code and they decided to dedicate their time and effort into making an indie website of their own. It’s really fun to see people rediscovering what the old internet was like and being interested enough to make a website that brings a sort of nostalgic feeling.

I’m not exactly super old and I sadly wasn’t around to see the early web but I still feel a sense of longing for the old internet. It felt like a much more alive place where you could socialize with others, meeting new people and making friends and such. It’s really depressing to see that most websites nowadays are just corporates.

I was inspired by these people to finally join the IndieWeb as well by making this website. I know it’s not really that great but I suck at web development, or more specifically I just lack creativity and such 😭

Anyways, I really appreciate that there’s still many people out there that are genuinely interested in computers and enthusiastic about the old web. The IndieWeb feels like a breath of fresh air from the corporate garbage that we’re all sadly used to by now. It’s a nice and social community that just brings warmth to my heart somehow and giving me a sense of belonging. For probably the first time ever on the internet, I actually feel like I’m surrounded by actual people. And it’s just so beautiful how their websites shows what they’re like on the inside. Most if not all social media platforms were unable to make me feel like this because they all felt wrong somehow.

Anyhoooo, this is it for now guys, I’ll write more posts in the future I promise! Toodalooo ya’ll :P

by Voxi0