💾 Archived View for sol.cities.yesterweb.org › blog › 20230901.gmi captured on 2023-09-28 at 16:02:44. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2023-09-08)
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posted september 01 2023
gemini://gemini.ctrl-c.club/~lettuce/students-on-gemini.gmi
hi. gonna cut to the chase here. i'm 22, a student until not long ago, even if somewhat out of touch with my generation when it comes to tech. the gulf between me and the average tiktok user feels massive. still let me give my two cents.
i discovered and started visiting gemini early 2022, and started my capsule sometime in april that year (my first microlog entry was 28/04, shortly before my 21st bday). before that, i was already a keeper of a personal website for a while (since 2020 maybe?) and hovering around smolweb and alternative internet spaces (hell, my capsule is hosted by yesterweb).
in my capsule intro i wrote (and never changed):
after poking around gemini for some time i decided i might enjoy a little secret vacation home in the internet. something like a dream that leaves you with nothing but a faint memory.
so this is what gemini is to me, mostly: a chill place with low stakes, where i get to host small things here and there without shoving it on anyone's feed, and browse with the calming dark oceanic lagrange theme, without worrying about catching up with a fast paced feed. i also have that gamefaqs archive bookmarked because it's lighterweight than firefox for running in the background. not that something like quake is resource intensive.
gemini has also put me among a different demographic than i'm used to. sometimes to my annoyance. but as someone interested on technology and eventually living in a world that doesn't suck (and how those two things interact) i'm also not entirely a fish out of water maybe. i blog about this sometimes.
i love my puter all my friends are inside it
main point of attraction is tbh the novelty. i think if you want to "sell" gemini, the similarities to the web are less important than the differences, because every website is the same, and they're all trying to be where *everyone* is (it's wild that i have otherwise lucid friends join/download instagram threads just to see what the fuss was about, when they'd not do the same for cohost). a while back i read Gretchen McCulloch's _because internet_, and an interesting concept she introduces there is a difference in internet users not necessarily in their age / generation, but how they first got online. so for a lot of people my age and younger, they joined somewhere like facebook, where they got online to talk to other people they already knew in meatspace. but others (like me) started off in forums for example, where they met new people online (usually through shared interests). i think it can be hard to "convince" the former to join a smaller space where they don't know anyone, perhaps.
but the thing is (at least to me) that gemini presents itself as a blank slate, a way to enter somewhere without baggage. and somewhere with freedom to create without pressures of algorithms, clout, blowing up etc etc. it's the same draw of personal websites, except less technically demanding (gemtext's learning curve is essentially flat, and i can't even think of writing html on a phone. i do hate using phones though). of course this lack of automated discovery can be itself a turn off for some ("how do you even find things?" "what is there to do?")
um. i'll also add that people around idk 25 and under? are easy marks for nostalgia lmao even fake / inherited. i think coming at it from an angle of history is also maybe worthwhile? idk, this is an unfinished thought, but it feels nice and fun to go against the grain and embrace old stuff ^_^ you can even look at things like _hypnospace outlaw_, a videogame emulating a 90s os. there's lots of games invoking those aesthetics honestly. like bbses and stuff. there's one i'm forgetting right now. but yeah.
^ oops that might sound off. regardless, i think most of your students won't use gemini no matter what. like, they will for class, but casually? not really. and that's alright. i think tech literacy is at an all time low, specially with young people who don't really think of the web as anything other than a handful of *shudders* apps. showing its inner workings, what lies in the fringes, and the alternative protocols is already a lot! it's rather sad that those who really might need it most (those getting their self worth and autonomy beaten into a pulp by the corporate web) tend to be the least willing to give those things up, but also that's the way things are engineered to be. but lead a horse to water and all that.
anyway, i think that's my ramble? i really should go grab some lunch before i start sounding delirious. anyway. there's a lot of old techies in here. it's a niche space. but that's not all that is, and it doesn't have to be just that, there's room for so much more (i try doing my part; i post my own art and share pieces i find in the www), but it takes a willingness to scream into the void.
on the other hand, it can be nice to have a journal that's perfectly unread as well.
as for other capsules, top of mind i enjoy cinni's space. cosmic voyage was also something that drew me in, even though i never wrote anything for it.
hope this helps? i read antenna and can also be reached at solflo@pm.me ^_^