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Mischa's Cursed Webring

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Re: Mischa's Cursed Webring

#81

Post by nine_k »

analyte123 wrote: post #31

Doing crazy things with CSS, including animations, has never been easier or more consistent between browsers, and yet creativity in web design has gone down practically to zero these days. I blame mobile, where nobody can seem to escape from the "responsive column of blandly styled content" paradigm.

It's the same reason why most modern books are bland streams of text set in brushed-up typefaces, while medieval manuscripts were written in whimsical hands and richly adorned with full-color illustrations and drop caps decorated over the top.

Back in 1995, a web page was an experimental medium, with very few experts in the field, and few businesses seeing it as a key asset. It could took long to develop, it could look fancy and whimsical, and there were few other sites to compare to, with the same properties. The chance for a web user to encounter something unusual was higher, because there was very little properly usual yet.

Today the web is the main medium, with a lot of standardization which comes from the need to be readable, accessible, look clean, and take as short to develop as possible. The consumer expects the same: simple, familiar packaging, easy access to the content which is usually a piece of text or a picture. This leaves especially little room for fancy on small-screen mobile devices. The web is not more of a place for artistic expression than newspapers were in 1970. Whimsical and fancy designs exist, but they are relatively rare and special-purpose, promo or art pages.

Re: Mischa's Cursed Webring

#82

Post by Veen »

antihero wrote: post #51
bartread wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suspect they think it's edgy to waste everybody's time by making oblique reference to some perceived slight. I can't work out what the problem is either. muybasado: Please, either speak plainly and explicitly or, if you're unwilling to do so, remain quiet.

It is in the nature of the right wing crank to portray themselves as the victim despite usually being the perpetrator.

But there are several right-wing cranks in that webring.

e.g. https://cursed.llolo.lol/thelightofgodministry.org/

https://cursed.llolo.lol/anti666.com

I don't think that can be the demographic group the absence of which they're complaining about.

Re: Mischa's Cursed Webring

#83

Post by throwaway316943 »

johnfn wrote: post #73
rlt wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, where are 2021's version of 1990's web?

I mean, by the time we find it it won’t be niche and arcane any more :-) Maybe roblox?

Crappy remixes on TikTok and Instagram that can’t hold a candle to the hay day of YTMND?

The other poster is probably right, the indie game scene is pretty prolific with jams and remixes and has more collaboration than most early web phenomena.

Re: Mischa's Cursed Webring

#84

Post by bad_extension »

Veen wrote: post #82
antihero wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is in the nature of the right wing crank to portray themselves as the victim despite usually being the perpetrator.

But there are several right-wing cranks in that webring. e.g. https://cursed.llolo.lol/thelightofgodministry.org/ https://cursed.llolo.lol/anti666.com I don't think that can be the demographic group the absence of which they're complaining about.

Or they may be angry because there is too much right-wing cranks, and not enough left-wing cranks.

Re: Mischa's Cursed Webring

#85

Post by aasasd »

beaconstudios wrote: post #25

Had to throw http://durgasoft.com/ 's hat into the ring too for the garish web design subset.

I actually still occasionally see ads or videos for Indian programming courses, that look close to that.

Considering that visual austerity is a distinct feature of Western visual design and seems foreign to Chinese/Indian/Middle-Eastern tradition—I sometimes wonder what Eastern people consider as examples of stupid tasteless Western design.

Re: Mischa's Cursed Webring

#86

Post by iFreilicht »

cosmodisk wrote: post #50
analyte123 wrote: post #31

Doing crazy things with CSS, including animations, has never been easier or more consistent between browsers, and yet creativity in web design has gone down practically to zero these days. I blame mobile, where nobody can seem to escape from the "responsive column of blandly styled content" paradigm.

I think I had enough "creativity" from webdesign. Video backgrounds, fading,or reappearing text sections, absurd colour schemes,or overengineered SPAs. I'd happily trade all that shiny wrapping paper into something a bit more boring and consistent.

Absolutely agree. There are so many creative but obnoxious design patterns caused by a need to distinguish a brand or the designers seeing themselves as artists more than engineers. Coolness over usability is commonplace, but it's not a good mantra to follow, and it's genuinely refreshing to see stuff like https://www.nngroup.com/ that is usable and functional on all devices, as boring as it may look.

But it doesn't have to be this way. Look at https://play.date/ or https://tokio.rs/, functional yet interesting. Tokio.rs in particular has the best implementation of one of the worst patterns in the modern web: sticky content that changes when you scroll. It's a great visual aid in this case, but becomes annoying quickly when overused.

Re: Mischa's Cursed Webring

#87

Post by antihero »

bad_extension wrote: post #84
Veen wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there are several right-wing cranks in that webring. e.g. https://cursed.llolo.lol/thelightofgodministry.org/ https://cursed.llolo.lol/anti666.com I don't think that can be the demographic group the absence of which they're complaining about.

Or they may be angry because there is too much right-wing cranks, and not enough left-wing cranks.

That was my read.

Re: Mischa's Cursed Webring

#88

Post by rdiddly »

muybasado wrote: post #4

Interesting project, however it seems it has a certain bias against a peculiar demographic, unfortunately this isn't surprising at all. Culture war permeates everything.

Culture war does permeate everything, including any time you see something that's perfectly balanced demographically, which is how you know it was contrived and is probably an ad or other obsequious sanitized corporate communication designed not to be cancelable.

Re: Mischa's Cursed Webring

#89

Post by johnfn »

throwaway316943 wrote: post #83
johnfn wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, by the time we find it it won’t be niche and arcane any more :-) Maybe roblox?

Crappy remixes on TikTok and Instagram that can’t hold a candle to the hay day of YTMND? The other poster is probably right, the indie game scene is pretty prolific with jams and remixes and has more collaboration than most early web phenomena.

I think that may be nostalgia talking. Some of the stuff my younger cousins send me from tiktok is genuinely hilarious - IMO definitely superior to ytmnd though YMMV.

Re: Mischa's Cursed Webring

#90

Post by johnfn »

krapp wrote: post #71
johnfn wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My theory for why this is is that in the past when the web was arcane and challenging to learn to develop, this actually acted as a filter for people who had a special sort of intellectual curiosity and passion to really push through and make what they wanted to make. It’s great now that the web is so broadly accessible, but now no such filter exists, so truly creative sites are fewer and further between.

The web wasn't that arcane or challenging to develop for - plenty of people without that much deep technical know-how managed with raw HTML and CSS, copy and paste and w3schools. Although most people weren't that creative, either. If anything, web development is far more arcane and challenging now. No one just writes HTML, CSS or JS in a text editor anymore, the bare minimum expectation is to use complex frontend fra…

I mean, this is easy to say, but I don’t think anyone in their right mind would willingly go back to 90s era web development of they had a choice. JS was a pitiful version of its current self - and good luck debugging it without browser debugging tools. CSS was done primarily with tables. Iframes were used everywhere. The state of the art web development IDE was notepad++. Browser inconsistencies were rampant and I hope you enjoy working around browser bugs because IE5 is ridden with them.

See, the thing about all the modern development infra we have is that it wasn’t just invented for fun - it solves real problems. Jquery was created to smooth over browser inconsistencies. Webpack was made so that when you import 20 JS files they don’t all clobber each other’s namespaces (ok, there’s a bit more to it, but bear with me here). NPM was made so that you can install dependencies without having to hunt down the JS download on Google.

This whole thing of looking at the past with rose colored glasses is a bit too easy to take too far.

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