As you might notice, at the bottom of every page of this site, I have a footer. On said footer… is an obscene number of little badges, many of which are animated. They’re all 88px by 31 px, which is pretty small by today’s standards. However, they didn’t come from today’s standards. From what I’ve read, they come from the late 90s. Before I go into these much more, I want to explain how I got here.
While I don’t remember how I found the page, I do remember the page that set off my mild descent. At some point, I found the github user Astrid. A funny description, a strange name, and a cute pfp. Nothing too out of the ordinary, especially for github. What caught my eye was the recently updated infra repo. Seeing this was surprising, as I’d been working on something very similar as of late (as seen in my previous blogs). I got excited about it, since infrastructure as code is rare to see in the wild, especially when NixOS is used. Going back to the profile page, I found their website, and nearly started crying from joy. The fun little gifs, the goofy blogs and news feed, and the cat assistant. Not to mention the (sorry) simple and retro-adjacent styling. It was all amazing to see, and I felt so at home, with that weird feeling of comforting deja vu. Scrolling down, I saw the giant block of badges. Queer pride, software love and loathing, and some random ones thrown in too. I’d seen some before, but not nearly to this degree. Scrolling further, I saw the webrings, something I wasn’t familiar with. I’ll get to those later.
After discovering the badges, and some on the other sites in the webrings, I decided to look them up. They don’t really have much of a name from what I can tell, other than “88x31 images/gifs/badges” or something. I’m going to call them 8831s, because I’m cool like that. Looking them up online, I found a variety of sites with pages and pages of the things, just walls of animated logos, text, and anime girls. I felt like I’d just had a secret gathering revealed to me, a whole world I didn’t even know existed. They link to projects, people, characters, shows, games, everything you could think of, like little stickers shouting “hey! here’s this thing I like, you might like it too!”. It was a beautiful world to discover, if not a little overwhelming. I haven’t gotten around to making any yet, but I definitely will in the future.
As brought up before, I also discovered webrings. They’re groups of people, linking their sites to each other in big lists, all sharing some common interest or trait. I wish I could compare it to something like twitter, or any other social media, but it’s just… not. Webrings feel nothing like the complete opposite of any social media page I’ve found. You’re suggested other pages, but they’re not shoved down your throat, and you can’t mindlessly scroll like on socials. You don’t get a block of hashtags, you get a row or a few of images, sometimes linking to things, sometimes not. Where social media feels loud, and aggressive, webrings and the “indie web” as it’s called feels… warm, and inviting. You don’t need to feel scared, and you’re not dragged into anything. When you do browse rings, it feels like you’re finding sites that’ve been hidden away, just for you. They’re pages that google wouldn’t give you, that you would never have found otherwise. It feels the way an old book would feel, but there are so many pages that are still updated, still active. All the feeling of an old page, without the age. It’s strange.
Honestly, I’m not sure if I’ll browse the “indie” web much. The reason modern social media is designed the way it has been is so you don’t leave it for long. You’ll always feel like you’re missing out if you don’t check in, and the platforms will reach out to suggest you content. Every other post is AI slop, or feels like it. You can’t post anything, as AI will just train off of whatever you post. The indie web feels like the other way around, where you can just check in on interesting people, see what’s new, rather than needing to dig through heaps of hate and arguments to see what you might be interested in. I’ll probably check back every once in a while, but I might forget the pages I liked. Or, maybe not. Maybe I’ll be able to break free from modern social media, and just keep up with the creators and figures I actually care about, without being exposed to all the slop and filler in modern media. I’ll definitely make some little 8831s of my own, and maybe I’ll make or join a webring with some friends. The whole experience was a nice break from the modern web, and a little reminder that
I love my puter,
all my friends are inside it.
