Welcome to my Homepage!

Make sure to sign my guestbook!

October 5, 2024
Category: Essay
Content Warning // Politics (US), Religion (Game Screenshot)

Heh, where do I begin?
In this strange world where capitalism reigns supreme, I find myself feeling both incredibly bored and frustrated with the modern-day internet, where every netizen is treated to a flurry of corporate minimalist designs, aggressive advertising, and AI-generated right-wing propaganda at every turn. All of this just so they can stay in contact with their loved ones, do their schoolwork, or simply just look up a chicken parmesean recipe for dinner.

I'm bored because most of it's the same "playing-it-safe" crap. Most websites these days uses bland, flat colors, sans-serif logos and enough JavaScript to make any browser feel like it’s trudging through molasses in a strait-jacket. Not to mention all the propaganda just largely being about some peaceful minority just living their life, which is somehow illegal now, apparently. As for the advertising, you can't go on any "mainstream" website without some means of ad-blocking, whether that be on the browser level or the DNS level. News websites hardly allow you to read their articles at all before they send you to the shadow realm.

Thank you, ImgFlip for your deep analysis of what it's like to read any article on The Washington Post.

I'm continuously frustrated at the fact that things that were once freely available are repeatedly becoming not-so-freely-available, simply because a greedy investor decided he wanted another yacht that day. Oh yeah, and there's also the part where those platforms eventually die as a result of being unprofitable despite serving millions of customers. Looking at you, Discord.

Oh, of course, can't forget the influx of these stupid bubbles with technology that drenches our already smoldering planet with even more lighter fluid. Let's see, there was BitCoin, then pretty much the entirety of crypto crashed, then Blockchain and NFTs, both of which also died after like, a year. Nowadays, we're dealing with a boom in content generation models that are misleadingly labeled as "artificial intelligence." Although personally, I think those models have some practical use as a TOOL. You know, to assist in a task, rather than using them as mass scale tools for plagiarism, hoaxes, or just to avoid paying people for labor. Of course, that also entails that said technology gets regulated to hell and back, and you can definitely count on that not happening anytime soon.

Anyway, enough of the ranting, here's something cool.
You ever hear of a little indie game called Hypospace Outlaw ?

Hypnospace Outlaw is a game that can't really be described with a single quip.

I mean, I guess you could try saying something stupid like "The game plays like Frogger, if it was awesome," but that wouldn't be doing it much justice.

This game is, well, a lot of things. First and foremost, it's an alternate-reality web browser complete with its own incredibly exaggerated, yet charming parody of the internet circa 1999. You, the volunteer Hypnospace Enforcer, must traverse this strange landscape and, well, enforce the policies of Hypnospace by marking content with one of five different types of infractions: infringement, abuse, illicit activity, malware, or extralegal commerce. All of this while operating a crappy virtual machine that slows down the longer you use it without rebooting.

Easier said than done, mind you. There are underground communities, secret societies, and even hacker forums accessible only via a backdoor in Hypnospace Explorer.

Underneath the game's goofy presentation, you'll find that it's actually this unique kind of detective game. I like to describe it as if TenderShoot has gameified that one time you stumbled upon a weird rabbit hole on some obscure, forgotten web forum, then proceeded to continue procrastinating on your homework for the next three hours because you were seeing just how far it goes.

No spoilers, but here are a handful of my favorite pages from early sections of this game:

First we have Bobby, who doesn't know how templates work.

BurninRubber50, who realy likes motorycles.

ZANE_ROCKS_14, who is actually 15, and is like, sooooo cool.

Hypnospace Heaven, which is where people write obituraries.

Katie's Kuddly Kat Korner

T1MAGEDDON, who is just weird

A page about a mythical being called Tall Green

And we have Mavis, who is equally as inept at Bobby at using templates.

Do you kinda see the picture here? On one hand, I see a game that provides a nostalgia trip for veterans of the internet, those who were around for America Online, GeoCities, ancient phpBB forums, the like. On the other hand, I see a social commentary about the potential for a free and personalized web.

What Hypnospace Outlaw captures so beautifully is the use of the web as a canvas for self-expression. Its digital landscape is modeled after GeoCities, the most notable real-life example that I'm aware of, which quickly became a haven for personal expression by the means of Microsoft FrontPage and a bit of creativity. A place for personal homepages that were quriky, and above all, they were yours to do with as you please. People had made their own pages entirely about their interests, a collection fo cool GIFs they had, or even just about themselves as individuals.

/SiliconValley/Bit/6149/

/SiliconValley/Network/1014/

/TimesSquare/Arcade/1457/

/WestHollywood/Heights/9670/

Much like in Hypnospace, sites are made by individuals, trying to showcase their personality to the world, advocate for a specific issue, or just show off something cool they made. Much less homogenized compared to the internet of today. I would also even make the argument it was much less corporatized, despite the fact that GeoCities was a paid service.

Furthermore, I think distinct vibe of "this site sucks" is a pretty clear signal that it was made by an actual individual, with their own personality, goals, interests, what have you. An actual person, compared to the boring "corporate" vibe that most websites these days give off. It's pretty hard to find an individual "homepage" these days unless you go out of your way to look for it.

To be fair, it's not all roses, and one of the big drawbacks here is the lack of any real UX research for the time, leading to a lack of accessibility for those who need it. But that begs the question, where do we go from here, given both what Hypnospace and GeoCities teach us about the experimental era of the web, and what we have learned about UX in the last 30 years?

Homepages in the Modern Era

You're reading this post on someone's homepage. My homepage, to be specific. Welcome to my homepage!

You've probably noticed that it's not a very professional site, and that's on purpose, because truthfully, I wouldn't be having as much fun with it if it were designed with the intention of being like, a professional portfolio. It would be frowned upon to use this color scheme, this font, and all of those goofy 88x31 buttons that you saw in the top-page. That's not fun, right?

Anyway, I have noticed a trend in the last several years, of people adopting their own homepage, complete with all of the self-expression and accompanying goofy aesthetics, but with one major difference: some of them are just much nicer to look at. We've had 20, 30 some odd years to grow the feature set of HTML/CSS and we also just have that research into UX that we just didn't have back then.

Best example I can think of is probably Freeplay's Website.

Freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeplay

Adorable, ain't it? It's whimiscal, it's goofy, and it's over-the-top with all the CSS animations (and foxes). Freeplay truly made this site, their space in cyberspace, their own, reflecting their personality and love of foxes.

On the flipside, if you a fan of the "legacy" aesthetics, might I suggest the site belonging to msxdotgay.

Rather nostalgic for some, sticking to a centered 900px container with tiled background images and text rendered in Times New Roman. They even put photos of their cats on the front page, which should be like, a legal requirement, I think (only kidding!)

What I find important is that these pages are made, above all else, by people, who wanted a place to express their own personality and showcase their projects, musings, or even just their cats.

Made by PEOPLE, not corporations. Corporations are not people, despite what your average Republican lawmaker would try to lead you to believe. *DJ Air Horn Sound*

Basically, what I'm getting at is, go and make yourself a silly little page on the internet. It doesn't have to be anything amazing or hell, even great, but it's yours. And it's yours to do what you please with. Share your cat photos, your little projects, or just yourself.

The web is ours, my friend. Let's go exploring!

You do not have to use Neocities, I am not sponsored by Neocities, I am simply just a fan of their service. Truthfully, use what you want.

Random homepage on Fediring