The aesthetic is downstream of something else. I miss the internet where every page looked different because everyone built their own, badly.
Everything was hand-made and slightly broken
You picked a layout, broke it, and fixed it by pasting HTML you did not understand into a box. The result was ugly and it was yours, which is a trade I would take again.
Nothing was optimised, because there was nothing to optimise for.
A profile was a room, not a feed
You decorated it once and people visited it. That is a different relationship to a page than an endless scroll, and it is the thing I am actually nostalgic for.
This site is the closest I get to that now, which is partly why it exists.
Why the look came back
Every revival is people reaching for a period that felt less surveilled. The clothes are the visible part. The reason is that the internet used to feel like somewhere you went rather than somewhere you were.
I am aware this is nostalgia for an internet that was worse in most measurable ways. I do not care.
More of me, and everything else, is on my page.
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