Neocities: the 90's Aesthetic as a Symbol?

https://neocities.org/browse?sort_by=featured&tag=

I'm in the early stages of a research proposal about the small web and the indie web, as part of my culture studies degree. I need to write a short essay (<= 15 pages) to finish a course about network culture ("network" as in "connections between people") with a chapter about the internet. I also need to write two interdisciplinary, long essays (~30 pages, if I remember correctly) as part of this MA program: my instructor has allowed me to extend my short essay, and attack my research question from more angles. I still don't have one research question or one pair of theoretical glasses, though: there's so many of them, and I find so many interesting things that turn into rabbit holes of information.

At the moment, the biggest mystery I have, is an artistic one. Many Neocities sites, including sites owned by teenagers (born after the 90's, of course) are stylized like websites from the 90's, or Geocities sites in particular. Some websites contain things like screenshots of applications such as Windows Live Messenger or retro-inspired design elements like Windows 9X style, "fake 3D" borders around elements, or even have a fake Windows XP taskbar at the bottom. However, in most cases, the content has nothing to do with 90's computing, 90's music, etc': most of the websites I looked at are personal websites (diaries or blogs of some sort), some have a social element to them (for example, a guestbook and links to websites of real-life friends) and some showcase an art portfolio.

The four themes that appear on these websites and unit them, are:

• Ownership and control: you own your website, own your data, and have full control of the website (you provide your own CSS and control the entire contents of each page)
• Freedom of expression: flashy GIFs, non-responsive layouts that don't work on phones and anti-a11y color combinations are all legitimate
• A safe, intimate space: a personal website is a place where you can share your feelings and thoughts without fear, because the audience is limited, the website is largely hidden from the world and it's OK to go by a pseudonym
• Ambivalance towards the internet and technology: commercialization is the enemy of freedom of expression and privacy, centralized, for-profit social media leads to alienation, phones are addictive-by-design means of consumption and (in many ways) the internet was better before "web 2.0"; on the other hand, people can use the internet to (truly) connect with each other, educate each other and make the world a better place

However, I'm barely scratching the surface here:

• How is this 90's inspired aesthetic of bright colors, unreadable text and wide websites, related to these four themes?
• Do these people, especially those who haven't used Geocities back in the day, see their website design work as an act of resistance against the web and against capitalism?
• Why is the "big web" unsafe?
• How do we prevent small spaces like Geminispace from becoming big, commercialized and dangerous? Do we have to?
• What does the future of the web look like, ideally and realistically?

I'm looking forward to interviewing more Gemini, Gopher and Neocities people. I think it's a fascinating topic, and I see many ideas and sentiments of interviewees in other contexts, too. I wonder if the coming of age of generation Z, the increased use of computers during the pandemic and various phone and social media related scandals in the last year or so (for example, the NSO scandals, Trump's social network and the acquisition of Twitter), are a fertile ground for Gemini-like acts of protest.