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Hello, small web.

I encountered all of this (Gemini, gemlogs) through my exploration of the small web which began with my encounter with bearblog.dev, a wonderful lo-fi blog hosting website.

https://bearblog.dev

I've been struggling to come up with posts there, and well, post anything in general. This feels perhaps a little less high-stakes, even if nobody knows who I am there on bearblog or here.

I suppose I like the idea of the audience being anonymous to myself as well, which might lend to more creative public writings.

I'm fascinated by new social spaces constructed in the internet age. I want, like many, to believe in the emancipatory promises of developing more modes of communication, interactivity, and expression, but I am wary of these promises as a form of techno-liberal enchantment as well. Can the small web, with its goal set on avoiding the problems of the modern web, be an accessible platform for building deeper connections? Does stripping away of those technologies that were so appropriated by corporate advertising contribute to a more thoughtful form of browsing the web? Can the small web avoid the search singularity of Google that the old web became while still drawing a network of communities together and making discourses accessible?

And what of moderation? Is absolute free speech on the web not a technological enchantment, a promise of liberation through more and more expression? Is this neo-liberal?

And so there we have it, a starting point, a springboard from which more thoughts will flow in this space. But for now, a toast to the small web and its small community of early techies carving out new frontiers. Even without revolution, existing matters more when we create.