💾 Archived View for midnight.pub › posts › 1969 captured on 2024-07-09 at 03:44:45. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
What a cozy little pub. Hey ~bartender, a whiskey - neat - if you please? :)
I am glad I found this spot, this comfortable corner of the interwebs, what appears to be something made for me and those like me, those who eschew the bloated, ad-ridden websites and "social" networks of today, algorithm-driven feeds of those looking for that quick dopamine hit of attention, just one more "like!" Just one more virtual thumbs-up. Just one more meaningless interaction. Let me post just one more selfie - someone will notice me.
No, I have longed for the internet days of yore for a long time. All the way from bulletin-board systems, to personal webpages, forums, and IRC - all where anonymous users talked about their interests and obsessions until they finally checked their clock and realized "Oops, I've stayed up till 6am again!"
But you didn't care. You were in your element. Your community. That place - whatever it was - full of people just like you. They shared the same interests. They shared information and learned from each other. They shared software they had written with each other, and talked about whatever they were up to without worrying about catching the attention of the Almighty Algorithm or some ad sponsorship.
These interactions had meaning. They had personality. The folks you conversed with felt real, even if you never knew their real name. On today's corporate-owned major sites, nothing feels real. It's all artificial, because everyone is vying for attention - the real modern currency. None of them want to be real, they only want to be the next big "influencer", whatever that word means.
Thankfully, even in this attention-fueled hellscape that is the modern Web, there are these refuges on other corners of the internet. The "smallweb", as we call it - those of us with our own personal sites, wikis, digital gardens. Beautiful places to explore in the Geminispace. Places like this cozy pub.
The web of yore isn't dead, it's just shifted, and if you know where to find it, you will find that same old sense of fulfillment. You'll keep learning new things from people you never knew existed, people just like you.
As for me? I'm just a simple hermit from the woods with a love of FOSS and minimalism. Thanks for letting me have a seat at the bar. I look forward to having a drink here for a long time to come.
~softwarepagan wrote (thread):
I definitely feel you, though I do think things peaked in the late 2000s where you could indeed still share a selfie but in a less exploitative and corporate environment (and then hop onto a forum that was virtually anonymous - really the best of both worlds).
I took a look at your little profile and it seems we have many interests in common! I am also interested in permaculture and homesteading, FOSS, retrocomputing etc.
Feel free to join us over in the Matrix room as well at #midnightpub:matrix.org.
Welcome to the Pub!
Searching Gemini / To leave the new web behind / War is only done / When it is gone from the mind
hi rav3n!
whiskey, hermit in the woods, minimalism (thinking Henry David T (I always misspell the last name)), FOSS, old internet - let ME pay for that drink! :D
And yea, the bulletin boards and personal pages was as far back on the Web as I date, as it was already AOL 4.0 chats and AIM personal chats when I *really* joined in 1997, but I am all-in on IRC now (tilde.chat and some libera.chat stuff), and explore many different elements of retro computing, focusing on lofi modern computing (sbc's and lightweight software, things from suckless.org and 100r.co). I plan on doing a RPi Zero W 2 running my own OpenVPN instance and a web pages (both on a small Linode instance right now).
No whiskey here, just espresso. As I dried up recently. I am more than ok with this tho.
~bartender - double-black espresso (cup of espresso with a shot of espresso), and whatever else patrons at the bar like. Let's start a Midnight tip jar at the end of the bar, maybe a guestbook, for the passers by?
Many out on the Smol Web *mention* The Midnight, few make an entry.
later
t