💾 Archived View for midnight.pub › posts › 2100 captured on 2024-08-31 at 14:51:33. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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browsing: an achievement, unto itself
let me say something - browsing the Web. I like browsing the Web. Sites, small sites, personal sites, static sites, tech sites, writing sites, blogs, journals, logs and on and on. Browsing the Web is fun. More importantly, browsing the Web is POSSIBLE, which was basically not the case 5+ years ago. I don't mean going from site-to-site - that's always been available, I mean going from links, to blogrolls, to webrings, to dense inner-world websites/services (:cough: Nightfall City :cough:), simplistic portfolios, a photo with a bio, a life journal rife with manifestos and meaning.
I just spent over an hour exploring blogrolls, and blogs, and sites, and /about pages, and /now pages, and /uses pages, and I can definitely say I am happy(er) now with the WWW than I was half a decade ago. Pre-COVID, when everything was the inescapable status quo, cynicism wasn't just in the air, but the lingo people spoke to have *any* exchange online. Many (I, so many I know) wanted to move on from that, I, and most others I know, certainly did.
If I could put symbolic flame to arrow to send to the sinking ship of social media accounts and un-used profiles on those services right now, I would. Yea, still millions on there, let them be, for those going back to the ocean of the web - to better shores and more promise, the small (just normal) web exists, and I love it.
The key to online happiness is avoiding search engines as much as possible, and truly traversing the web of links. That's when/how I find the best online reading experience.
Search results have been so clearly disassociated from content itself in favor of advertising dictates for.. has it really been a couple decades already? But, oh, how glorious it's been to find the web as invented/intended is still there, and better than ever, especially in contrast to the cold lifeless content flat line kowtowing to what advertising can abide.