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Where Have All the Websites Gone?

fromjason.xyz

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Re: Where Have All the Websites Gone?

#301

Post by blueridge »

rvrs wrote: post #291
blueridge wrote: post #268

I don't know, I've given up on following people across the web. They’ve all got a sickness that compels them to incessantly fidget with their sites: fonts, colors, designs, and About pages change almost weekly. And then they babble on about why they made those decisions. It’s a garden, a stream, a worry board, a playground. It runs on WordPress, now Jekyll, now Hugo, now Ghost. No no, now it’s “handcrafted” HTML and…

This comment is so mean-spirited... reading it made me sad. I'm allowed to own so little in this world, so how I present myself online is particularly dear to me. If you don't like my website, you can go find others. What does it matter to you?

I'm not trying to be mean, I'm just sharing an honest opinion and criticizing a widespread behavior that I've noticed. I've stopped following people because the "housekeeping" posts just kept coming. There's so much focus on digital structures, on the means by which they express themselves or engage their audience, on the colophon, that they forget to make a point or write about anything else.

I'm worn down by this kind of chatter, by the hyper-focus on the platforms and the tools instead of the message. It's the same thing with designer portfolio pages. They can't get off the treadmill and they're constantly tweaking their portfolio instead of settling on a good layout and letting their work speak for itself.

There's this endless frenetic energy that pushes people to search for phrases, labels, names, categories, definitions that allow them to rationalize their behavior and justify how they're spending time online.

Listen, I'm the OCD type and I'm guilty of this sort of thing, too. And every now and then I find myself obsessing over tools in a way that's unproductive and I have to stop and pull myself out of that headspace. There's an instant feedback loop to editing themes, messing with fonts, publishing a blog post (that no one will read) and so it's easy to keep going. And it's easy to waste a fuck load of time doing this sort non-work.

Anyway, I feel like I'm watching the progression of a most chronic illness that keeps people tinkering in an anxious state of mind, and that makes me sad. It seems unhealthy to me, but you can do whatever you want!

Re: Where Have All the Websites Gone?

#302

Post by dylan604 »

jwells89 wrote: post #230
dividefuel wrote: post #159

The causes seem two-fold. One is that most people consume content in apps, so most creators create contents for that audience. TikTok, Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, YouTube, etc are where users are, so it's where creators put their content for visibility. Related to this is, I feel, the switch to mobile, where the more limited UX of the device makes it a LOT easier to just stay in the same app rather than type URLs or m…

IMO "apps" is something of a red herring. I don't think a whole lot would change if somehow everybody switched to web versions of big social media; they'd just be endlessly scrolling in a single browser tab instead of in a single app. This effect was apparent back before smartphones became ubiquitous, where desktop users (especially more casual/less technical) were spending disproportionate amounts of time on Faceboo…

But these platforms want you on their app instead of webpages. That's why the apps exist. There's a reason they are willing to go through the hassle/expense of maintaining native code apps instead of just one website. It is the core of their business.

Re: Where Have All the Websites Gone?

#303

Post by tasty_freeze »

The world keeps turning and it can be shocking when what was once a comfortable way of doing things, so comfortable you just take it for granted, suddenly becomes passe. A couple others things come to mind, not just personal websites.

I used to like giving CDs to friends and family at Christmas: here is some music that you might like that you probably don't know about. I'm sure it was a frog in a boiling pot phenomenon, but it seemed to happen all at once: the recipients all said, "Thanks, but I don't have a CD player."

The same thing with app development -- people want to click a link and immediately start interacting and not need to install anything. I've written a few emulators for old computers that weren't popular to begin with, which already limits the audience to a handful of people who care at all. Even among that narrow selection of people who visit my sites, probably 95% of them can't be bothered to download and install an emulator, and I get it. It would be a fun exercise rewriting them to be web apps, but the inability to seamlessly save/restore disk images to the user's space really harms the experience.

Anyway, I have to attend to my guestbooks and curate a webring.

Re: Where Have All the Websites Gone?

#304

Post by ghaff »

Stranger43 wrote: post #25

It feels like the web grew up into an bitter old fart who takes everything way to seriously. What's missing is the culture of "anonymity" where everyone was pretty much just a screen name and people did not give that much care to their long term reputations and the fall from that more or less started with facebooks real name policy, or rather when facebook stopped being an glorified phonebook and started being an con…

On the other hand, in Usenet days, a lot of people were coming in from fairly elite institutions (whether academia or companies) and they were absolutely using their True Names and institutional associations. There was a bifurcation between this and people who participated under handles that weren't obviously linked to discoverable account (which was more associated with BBSs early on).

Re: Where Have All the Websites Gone?

#305

Post by trealira »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #163
assimpleaspossi wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my eyes, reddit is the same trash it's always been. Yes, you can find decent specialized subs here and there but, even then, you have to weed through the trash to get a decent response and keep a thick skin from those who are only there to put you down to make them feel better about themselves. And that's never going away.

From 2006 when I joined until maybe just after Obama (2009 or 2010, not sure? maybe as late as 2011) it was the best ever. Like HN on roids. Better than Slashdot that came before it, which was already a junk site by that point, larger than K5. Then it ate every internet forum ever, and turned into this weird authoritarian pervert Myspace thing. Now it's not even a website, but a phone app. I hesitate to click on redd…

If you have a Reddit account, you can opt out of the New Reddit design, so Old Reddit is displayed without the link needing to be prefixed with "old.*".

Re: Where Have All the Websites Gone?

#306

Post by simonw »

jassyr wrote: post #283
simonw wrote: post #190

I want more people to have link blogs. I have one in the sidebar of https://simonwillison.net/ which I've been running since November 2003. You can search through all 6,836 links here: https://simonwillison.net/search/?type=blogmark I can post things to it with a bookmarklet. It has an Atom feed. It's such a low-friction way of publishing. A lot of https://daringfireball.net works like this too. I also like https://w…

I enjoyed the blog. Where do you find the time to post though, once you're done with work or do you schedule specific time to post?

I think the secret to blogging frequently might well be not having a job... I occasionally pick up pieces of consulting work or sponsorship but I'm mainly working full-time (uncompensated) on my own projects.

Link blogs are different though: posting to those genuinely takes a couple of minutes per link. I've maintained my link blog happily while having a full-time job.

Re: Where Have All the Websites Gone?

#308

Post by trealira »

bheadmaster wrote: post #120
krapp wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's all you've been doing. But 4chan wears its infamy on its sleeve with pride (usually white pride.) The Alfred E. Neuman shtick of disaffected bemusement was stale even when Mad was published on dead trees. But go ahead and take the last laugh. You're being neither clever nor insightful here.

> Yes, that's all you've been doing. No, in the comment you've originally replied to I have clearly stated a possible explanation of why 4chan has a bad reputation. Please refrain from pointless "no u" comments, and attack my arguments instead. > But 4chan wears its infamy on its sleeve with pride (usually white pride.) 4chan is not an entity onto itself - it is composed of many individuals, that was the whole point…

On the rest of 4chan outside of /b/, you'll find lots of racist comments. Particularly on /pol/, but there are plenty even ignoring that board. You can report particular posts for breaking the "racism outside of /b/" rule, but it's very hit-or-miss whether the rule is enforced.

Re: Where Have All the Websites Gone?

#309

Post by theshackleford »

krapp wrote: post #117
bheadmaster wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah. 4chan's reputation is entirely undeserved. See? I can also make claims without any arguments whatsoever.

Yes, that's all you've been doing. But 4chan wears its infamy on its sleeve with pride (usually white pride.) The Alfred E. Neuman shtick of disaffected bemusement was stale even when Mad was published on dead trees. But go ahead and take the last laugh. You're being neither clever nor insightful here.

> You're being neither clever nor insightful here.

If only you’d considered this yourself before posting.

Re: Where Have All the Websites Gone?

#310

Post by theshackleford »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #168
bheadmaster wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. On /b/, all legal (in the US) content is permitted. It serves as a sort of containment board for the degenerates to shitpost, leaving other boards alone. Nobody takes any content from /b/ seriously, and the nickname for /b/ users is "/b/tards". In fact, /b/ is just a small part of 4chan, one that most users actually loathe, but which seems to be the most highlighted in public consciousness. Probably due to its c…

> Nobody takes any content from /b/ seriously. That's a bold claim. It requires a single counter-example to disprove. I take it seriously, so your statement is empirically wrong. Please retract it.

Nobody intelligent. Where you fall on that spectrum is your problem.
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