On Making Things Ourselves
January 11, 2025
We used the say that "the internet lasts forever" -- but it doesn't, not in the good way. Not all of it. The internet and our presence on it is impermanent. Sure, things we posted might live on a server somewhere for some random person to take and use in whatever way they might choose... but us? Our individual lives that we upload to spaces we don't own, we see how quickly it can be taken and shredded. How quickly access to our own creations can be pulled. Ironically, I think the first major version of this for me was when Yahoo bought and subsequently killed geocities back in 2009, removing who-knows-how-many original works from people. Like, I don't need anyone to find and read my horrible high school Backstreet Boys fanfic, but I did write it and I did make the site it lived on, and a corporation just threw it in the trash.
Clearly, I've become kind of a zealot loudmouth about this whole neocities thing. If you've spent anytime around me in the last three days, odds are I've mentioned it. But... I don't know. I forgot what it was like... to just slowly build something small and silly with my own brain. Not dragging and dropping elements into a puzzle of a pre-approved digital landscape, but crafting the puzzle pieces themselves and putting them together even if the pieces don't quite fit.
This site is ugly. And that's okay. I have my pleasant corporatized site for professional reasons, but this one is like... Hello! I'm a human being! Human touch all over this little machine hosted baby. Right now, it feels like we're in a world with tech trying to take over the things we create as human beings, so maybe I am chasing the alternative we used to have. We made things and tech was there to serve whatever purpose we needed to.
Who knows how long neocities will stick around, but I'll take it while it's here to remind me what it was like when a random person, with very, very little technical know-how could build a thing and put it online in whatever way they chose. And if it folds, instead of moving to another social platform, I'll find one like this, do it all over again if I have to, and have fun while I'm doing it because making things is fun.