💾 Archived View for reptilic.us › log › 2021-04-04.gmi captured on 2022-06-03 at 22:48:11. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
It took me long enough to get a Gemini capsule set up that I'm worried the initial buzz has worn off. People heard about this crazy new internet protocol, and they got excited because it was something Google didn't control yet. Maybe they were reminded of the early web, back when it just served static pages to users who had asked for them. And then they try it out for a couple days and they realize the early web didn't actually _do_ anything, and there's no way to be a Gemini influencer.
That sort of guarantees a small user base, but that doesn't seem like such a bad thing. Companies and consultants smoothed the edges off the web to make it safe for everybody's grandparents. They did not do this because they care about empowering senior citizens with technology, but because they needed to get as many users as possible online in order to extract every possible trace of value from the resulting data.
If that's the compromise we need to make in order to bring the internet to Aunt Judy, then I'm sorry, but I've gotta side with the gatekeepers on this one. If Gemini forevermore remains an obscure, ham-radio-esque pastime for a tiny cohort of supernerds, that will be fine with me.