A short rant about Web spaces

September 18, 2022

I admit to being terminally online, but I am the kind of terminally online who spends more time lurking (I'd say 85% of the time) rather than posting. Started in 2003 and it was downhill from there.

The Web has gotten shittier over time, full of botposting and SEO bullshit and social media cancer. Everyone is being ironic, and predatory moderators ban anything that smells of wrongthink or not wholesome heckin adorable and updootable (and for free too!).

I hate it, and a certain website going down (no, not KF) has made me realize the kind of space that I crave can no longer be recreated in the modern Web, because 2000s Web is dead. Maybe because a certain demographic now holds sway over the Web? Or maybe because Zoomer and Millennial shitposting is different, and so is the way they interact with fandom. I can tell most of the time if a space is filled with Millennials and Xers who experienced 2000s web spaces; there's just something different and it's not the liberal use of gamer words or laughing at people's online antics (speaking as someone who lurked fandomwank before...), just how they are earnest about their interests, able to write at length about their ship or fight over power levels. Maybe people still do that, but there's this veneer of smugness, not earnestness. Like they prefer quipping and Tweeting quirky bullshit, being sarcastic and pretending to airs of being smart and quick-witted. It was cringe seeing quips and "wise"cracks being upvoted the most, and all comments on that top reply also trying to one-up it in sarcasm or referencing some popular media property.

Even worse, there are barely any female-only spaces that ISN'T filled with people policing each other's language and thoughts.

Maybe this is the sign that I need to curb my Internet addiction... but then again I'm here on Neocities trying to re-design my website.