Our little web

16 Sep, 2025

I often yearn for the old web, or atleast what it looks like in my rose tinted glasses. Back when people just uploaded stuff, not for fame or fortune but just the desire to be heard. A time before AI slop where everything was created by hand by humans.

The slow net

There are many different views on how to recreate the old net. A popular one is the vibe of the old net, with white, bare html pages sprinkled with grainy bitmap images. Another one is creating a curated ring of sites, disconnected from the corporate web. The fediverse is a recreation of the large, corporate web in the hands of the people, negating profit incentives and stakeholders.

But what I personally desire is the slow net. Away from the endless scroll and the constant clawing for my attention. I feel like a resource to be extracted, in the form of my attention, opinions or my money. Even many small blogs try to sell me something, with their posts being just avenues for profit.

I want to hear the thoughts of people in their different life situations. I want to see the art of people who are trying to express themselves. I want to play the amateur developers janky games. I want to relive the stories that people experience in role-plays. I want people to express themselves with no desire but to express themselves.

How to solve this

I don't know. There isn't a lack of people expressing themselves, the problem is discovering them. But how do we solve this? Search engines prioritize sites that are SEOmaxxing, aka. the corporate web. There are some services that promise the small web, but I dislike that they are curated by a central entity, often to fit a vibe. There are also some search engines that prioritize the small web, but in my experience they easily get flooded with barren slop.

The only way I see is that we, the people that express ourselves link to each other. If you have a site that you think fits here, then let me know! Send me a mail at bigboismith at proton.me. And if you have something that fits on one of my other pages, still let me know. If you found this post (or any of my other pages) interesting then please link to it from your page!

In practice I believe that we should avoid linking to other pages in the middle of our posts, excluding situations like links to disambiguation of words or acronyms. I believe that we should follow the format that Wikipedia uses, where at the end of each page there is a Further Reading header, with relevant or further explaining articles.

As I continue to discover the net, I'm going to share pages that I found thoughtful or interesting in a Further Reading at the bottom of each page (of course assuming I have found something relevant to said page), and you should too.