i miss the old days of the interwebs

hey there! if you're here, reading this, welcome to my first post on dev.to! i have been here for a while and i've thought of what my first post should've been a lot, and i ultimately decided that bringing up something possibly nostalgic might be the best way to go.

i was watching a video by Ran Segall (Flux on YouTube) the other day, and it pretty much summarizes why websites look similar, and why that's a good thing. it explains something i call the the creativity — functionality trade-off.

i ended up thinking about the video a lot because i had similar questions floating around in my mind. why do all the websites i see nowadays look the same? even the super pretty ones? this blog is NOT about websites created for the purpose of serving employers, customers or businesses, but is geared more towards the look and feel of personal websites, out of which most just exist on the web as an extension of someone's resume or a portfolio of their work.

with the decline of geocities and kinda-sorta death of tumblr, it seems like for the most part, a lot of creativity also died. even though services like glitch and neocities still exist, websites have become a lot more professional than personal, as everyone and their grandma is moving their business to the world wide web. there are more developer jobs than ever since working remotely = working safely. not being a people-person, this is an amazing thing!

BUT this also makes me think of the time personal websites just existed as a place where people just let out their creative juices and really made their websites their own. most websites turned out to be cringey, included bad design and ux, had low accessibility and a few even looked like they might download a virus on your computer, but they were just so unique. they really made you think of people, their thoughts, feelings, likes and dislikes, and individual aesthetics, no matter how objectively (and subjectively) good, or bad or downright cringey they were.

these websites used to be how individuals expressed themselves back when social media didn't exist the way it does now. tons of gifs in backgrounds and as cursors, highly saturated sparkles, bright rainbows, loud music playing in the background without any warning, those bouncing ads, loads of clickables,, these are all seem as extremely bad ux in most, if not all cases, but i really miss them.

i personally feel it's very hard to customize much of your online identity if you just depend on social media. everything just looks the same and boring. people try to put cute headers on twitter, create a themed layout on instagram or edit their images and videos in a way that seems to be distinguishable amongst the crowd of copycats and conformers.

there's no way to truly customize the actual look and feel of your internet identity unless you make a personal website. even with websites, people use templates and call it a day. while there's nothing wrong with that, it's all just so boring 😔

also, with the boom of smartphones and smartphone applications, people would rather use apps instead of browse websites even though doing the later might prevent all the clutter that endlessly gather up and crash their phones. there's options like making your website a pwa (progressive web app), but why would someone even care to download your personal website?

where am i going with this anyway?

i don't really see people trying to create something that is truly an extension of themselves on the web, not even with all these amazing website builders like webflow, squarespace and even carrd, that allow people to create pretty much anything without code, so i thought i'd rant about it for a bit and then add some really cool stuff i found on the interwebs for those who didn't run away.

you can find some really cool websites linked below, that happen to be reminiscent of that old web aesthetic, since i feel like they might inspire someone.

there's flashy animations and loud tunes playing without any warning on a few of them, so please open them at your own risk! some may even seem cryptic, but that's just the vibe they're going for!

cool websites

these aren't just personal websites, there's some that you may end up visiting way more after this because they do cool things.

ending thoughts

i hope someone reads this post and maybe gets inspired to add more personality to their website without being too afraid of the implications behind it. make a personal website just for fun! don't associate to yourself if you don't want people to see it. it can just be an expression of yourself even if it's totally anonymous! i also want to start really working on my personal website, which has sort of been in the under construction phase since i got the domain back in april this year.

p.s: i'm so sorry this is all out of place, i used to blog tons years ago but i haven't in a while so yeah