💾 Archived View for midnight.pub › posts › 1893 captured on 2024-06-16 at 12:30:27. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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I wander around. Streets of the web. Non-filter cigarette trailing smoke in my wake, craving coffee, bold caffeine to see me through the night. 4 AM now and only waifers and hobbyists and insomniacs ride the broadband of sites long emptied.
I enter The Midnight. Familiar faces all around, albeit, with an "Away" status to their presence (or, a presumed Away status). I spark another cig at the bar, glancing for nearby patrons. The jukebox, cackling in the back, old tunes of classic music, as well as other one-off classic punk hits play through as I smirk at the barkeep, knowing ~bartender has my favorite memorized. Black coffee. Nothing else.
I wonder how this all started. My writing online, also why writing *itself* started for me, at such a young age. I think of the 2017/2018 quasi-renaissance of blogs - terms like Smol Web, decentralized web, indie web, personal pages, POSSE and the like cropped up overnight. Prior, it was full scale life blogging into the Tumblr wind, nary did folks have interest in longform text or anything more than a status update. Upon joining Write.as, I saw more privacy-conscious and anti-establishment blogs pop up. Anti-establishment in the sense that large companies had worn out their welcome, people reacting.
But I fell into it (indie web) backwards. No deliberate effort to DO an indie web thing online. I just changed my blog platform from Tumblr to Write.as, and all the Smol Web narrative and antics found their way to my awareness. Feeds, blogs and social, all echoed indie web activities, I always agreed with it.
Espresso flavored puffs of the end of an Edgefield see me wanting a ginger ale, but I curb the mini craving and pet Smudge instead. Smoke rising to meet the blades of the fan above, jukebox smashing Black Flag that only an outcast watering hole would be blaring at 4 AM on a Sunday morning.
Save the music in the background, it is quiet. Quiet in my mind. Quiet(er) in my soul. The alley out the front and back doors of The Pub host rain soaked streets and distant traffic of memes and trends in the deep distance.
Time to stamp the last cig of the eve, venture to the chilled wind of Out There, and walk contemplatively into the fog with the Midnight sign flickering calmly in the background from where I exit.
Until later, Midnighters. Until soon.
You still have that magic touch, tffb!