What if I want to make my own fun, colorful website with javascript games and pixel art and stuffs but I'm not a 16-year-old therian endogenic system from Germany/Canada with fandom autism? Not to seem out of touch or anything, but it feels weird and tragically ironic that the indie web, a community that's supposed to be focused on free-form self-expression without the boundaries of modern social media, centers one very specific creative archetype that thrives on rigid structure and constructing one's identity out of hundreds of discrete objects, interests, and labels that seem optimized for audience/algorithmic legibility. Nearly every personal site in this scene genuinely feels like it could have been made by the same person, with almost all of them seeming to follow a basic script that optimizes for a performative approximation of individuality through conspicuous consumption; nothing on the billion or so 'shrine' pages explicitly named as such do anything to establish the creator's uniqueness beyond signalling their devotion to a particular media property. Is true individualism on the internet dead, and are we all just reflections of the things we consume through our screens nowadays?
unc think i gon read allat :skull:
>>109399624You're not special, you're the product of your environment and you define yourself by the stuff you like just like everyone on nekoweb, neocities, etc.
>>109399649true, but what does it say when it seems like the majority of people on those sites come from a very specific, very online upper-middle class environment that seems almost like a machine designed to create these people, and does this seeming monoculture defeat the entire ethos of radical self-expression that the indie web is built around? it's almost as if computer science is only taught in schools in rich, liberal locales where the funding exists for such programs and the wealth of documentation for various libraries and frameworks that exist in english disproportionately benefits those who speak that language fluently in terms of their capacity to establish an online presence.
>2026>web is huge and sprawling>zero discoverability for anything not on a centralized platform>…unless the owner is aggressively self-promotingmeaning every site you see is made by someone screaming “look at me, I’m different”
>>109399624True but it's not like the average /g/ user is much better.Also I guess these labels serve their purpose. Mainly as filtering for people you don't desire to interact with.
>>109399624>What if I want to make my own fun, colorful websiteMake one.>therian endogenic systemIgnore the trannies and DID cringe.>indie webItself a branded label. It's just hypertext.>Nearly every personal site in this scene genuinely feels like it could have been made by the same personDoes yours? Stop worrying about the "scene".>Is true individualism on the internet deadNo.
>>109399694You don't need a CS degree to make a Sailor Moon fanpage on Neocitites.
>>109399624What's stopping you? I don't get it. Just go for it. The fact that all sites look the same is due to skill and effort. The 90s had dream weaver, flash, and fron page. Anyone making sites today is doing it by hand and limited by their skills. 90s had table and iframe design like https://www.spacejam.com/1996/ but if you look up any tutorials now days its all react and html5 its much harder to make and upload a shitty site. Even harder to make it unique. I think the biggest blocker is actually that no one cares. People don't read or comment on eachothers blogs or posts any more. They just drop a meme on twitch or downvote something on youtube. So the hardest part of the modern web is finding ANYONE who cares about reading and writing on the web. Thats why everything truly looks the same. There's only a few autists left. The same autistic nerds who watch anime and make gifs and weird fan art are the only ones really making and writing online. I haven't seen any other communities. Even the old hacker news bloggers have moved on. The only blogging left is corporate blogs using it as a form of advertising not art or self expression.
>>109399624>>109399694are you really this fucking stupid? Making a website you want is easy af and I do it without theses services for like pennies a month. I make random shit for the fun of it and now with AI I can make more shit that I couldnt have otherwise. The only issue is you have to have a fucking reason to do it. Most of those people you seem to hate have a fucking reason a hobby and interest. It is telling you have zero of that so in typical zoomer faggot fashion you blame everyone else. I have the issue where I just like making shit and then when I am finished making it I don't do anything with it. I've made THOUSANDS of websites with basically nothing on them because its fucking fun you faggot.
>>109399825Most of those people don't give a fuck if people see the stuff they make either. Most of the blogs and shit no one gives a fuck when you can just use twitter or whatever where people will show up to look at your garbage for a moment. I know a lot of Japanese personal blogs and they just post because they actually just like the act of posting their shit to a personal website.
>>109399825nothing's stopping me - i have said personal site already and only posed the (poorly-articulated) rhetorical question in the op as a way to illustrate how independent web design has arguably become a hyper-specific subculture in its own right with its own norms and aesthetics. i do agree though that the dynamics of the modern internet, esp the concept of platforms as a whole, create a path of least resistance for creators where anyone who isn't creating a website for the sake of it chooses easier mediums with more discoverability and monetization potential. (i.e. a substack instead of a traditional blog) this creates an enormous selection effect where the only people who are hosting their own content on their own terms are those for whom it remains an ideal choice - digital artist types who want a gallery page, foss advocates, and linkedin drones who rely on their vibe coded portfolio sites for career advancement purposes.
>>109399649spbp. i'm so tired of faggots like OP.
>>109399911OP has a point. Even if he worded it in kind of an insufferable way.
>>109399624>Nearly every personal site in this scene genuinely feels like it could have been made by the same person, with almost all of them seeming to follow a basic script that optimizes for a performative approximation of individuality through conspicuous consumptionall i need to tell you is: screw your revisionism.
>>109399850i never said i hated anyone or that i resented certain forms of creativity, (i self-host on my own pc with a reverse proxy btw) just that the visible side of the current independent web ecosystem is a product of a certain set of incentives that seem to produce a kind of monoculture.
>>109399939What? Its always been middle class btw who the fuck do you think had access to the early internet? So what? Why don't you actually create something that you want to post. Like I said those types are the onlys who want to share stuff.
>>109400112that's what i'm doing; not sure what i was thinking with this post to begin with besides trying to highlight how socially exclusionary independent web creation as a distinct subculture can feel to some. when the community is full of people who'd call you a chud or a creep for holding idiosyncratic opinions (even if you technically align with them but reasoned from first principles instead of downloading all your opinions from bluesky) or existing outside of a narrow age range, it makes it harder for the circle to attract people with differing skillsets and aesthetics who might make unique and valuable contributions. just to be clear, i'm *not* expressing my personal anxieties, just identifying a systemic problem with the indieweb scene as a whole.
