why i made a website (and you should too)

i wrote a manifesto on why i believe in the old web revival movement. you can find it (when i post the link)! i also wrote this because i wanted to share a bit more about why it’s important to me personally, and also about my journey with computer science. i know it’s very wordy. if you don’t care, just check out my manifesto! but i hope someone can relate to my experience. smiley face.

my origins on the internet + web 2.0

the first time i was exposed to the world wide web was when i was around three years old. i got my first webkinz toy, a black and white cat named anya, and with my sister’s help, we made an account for her. webkinz was a home for kids to bring their stuffed animals to life, literally. we could take care of them, dress them up, take them to the park where we could socialize with other animals, and generally be a part of a virtual world of kids our age.

as i got a bit older, i got my first computer and flip phone. the flip phone was strictly for calling my parents to pick me up from school and to play sims 1 on the smallest screen ever created. the computer was for giving dolls makeovers on girlsgogames.com, playing papa’s freezeria, showing my dad annoying orange and fred music videos, and making friends on one of the many kid and tween dedicated spaces on the web (club penguin, imvu, moviestar planet, et cetera).

around the age of seven, i came across scratch, which is a platform to help teach kids how to code by simplifying the process into drag-and-drop blocks and intuitive interfaces. when existing sites didn’t have what i wanted (or i didn’t want to pay for them), i could find what other people created just by putting these blocks together. replica five nights at freddy’s and minecraft games, animated shows and short films, interactive chatbots of my favorite characters - anything i could imagine was possible on here. so along with making friends with some of these incredibly talented programmers, most of which were no more than ten years older than me, i started learning how to make projects of my own. they were by no means impressive, but they were a creative and social outlet for me, and i had fun which is all that really matters anyway :)

i made my own website a year later while taking an html and css class. it was like designing my own room. i made the wallpaper my favorite shade of green and put up pictures i liked to look at. i had so much fun in the process. i’m pretty terrible at art on paper, because i overthink everything and the permanence of paint makes me too nervous to start. online, though, everything is reversible. at risk of sounding corny, i fell in love with programming (i don’t care that html is not a programming language leave me alone) and knew this is what i wanted to do with my life.

social media brainrot sigh

making the site was great, but actually interacting with others was a bit tough. eventually, i abandoned my website in favor of getting on social media. it was 2014 and no one really made their own website anymore… myspace and the era of customizable personal pages were gone. but i still loved talking to people online, and i made a profile on basically everything - instagram, twitter, tumblr, pinterest, musical.ly, dubsmash, vine. i could connect with friends from school, but also be part of communities with likeminded interests. as a fangirl by nature, i got into a lot of heated arguments about whichever girl group i was obsessed with at the time. but with the way social media algorithms are engineered, conflict and controversy is what got others’ attention, and that’s the content i was ‘recommended’.

i’ve become far too familiar with different communities on basically every social media platform which exists today, definitely at a younger age than i should have been. though i’m grateful that my unrestricted internet access gave me so much freedom to explore what i like and make friends online, i came across some of the worst parts of the internet too easily (especially before the adpocalypse and better content moderation). but even beyond the problem of scarring stuff kids can find online, which, let’s be honest, is basically unavoidable, being on traditional social media affected my psyche negatively. obviously it’s not just me. the perils of social media and what it’s doing to the kids is a topic which has been ran into the ground, and writing about it is really trite at this point, but off the top of my head, the focus on popularity statistics (like/follower/view counts), unrealistic standards, negativity and harassment… i don’t think it’s reductive to say that most of gen z has felt these effects and let these platforms change how we view ourselves and interact with others. regardless, we’re all basically forced onto them, and cut off from much of socializing if we don’t participate. one day we will be free… a girl can dream.

starting something new!

i had a pretty tough time my freshman year of college. it was a sort of massive turning point of my life, and i was being thrown into an unfamiliar world and trying to find my place in it. being on social media only made my experience worse. my constant comparison to others and fear of missing out fed into my depressive cycle. i deleted instagram and tiktok constantly to get my mind off of that, but reinstalled them days later out of sheer impulse.

i was pretty lucky to (randomly) get a wonderful roommate who helped me so much throughout this time period. i care a lot about what others think and how people view me, and always tend to craft an image of myself based on what i think others would like to see. she is the complete opposite in that sense and i always admired how naturally creative and self-assured she is. both of us grew up on the internet and deep in online communities, and she already knew about the old web revival movement on platforms like neocities. she told me to get off of tiktok and introduced me to neocities because i would really like it. and i did!! we had so much fun exploring other people’s sites and designing our own.

the great thing about personal websites is because of how customizable they are and how small and interconnected the old web community is, they feel a lot more intimate, and like you’re actually making a friend online when you see someone’s site. the amount of creative freedom you get means you can put your whole heart into the site without word limits or format restrictions, and without any quantitative engagement metrics (i mean, you can view your website views, but i choose not to, because focusing on them too much makes me a bit sad). i won’t rave too much about how much i love the independent web here though, because if you’re on neocities, you probably already know this.

designing my own website and surfing others’ sites made me feel like i was right back in third grade, exploring the corners of the internet for the first time. i wanted it to feel like an extension of myself and act as a little diary. i love to write and talk in long-form and i didn’t have a place to do that until now. it also let me express some of my more niche interests that my friends don’t really want to hear about on traditional social media platforms. most importantly, it reminded me that i really love to code, because i’m making exactly what i want come to life, just like i used to do on scratch when i was little. it’s not like i’m designing anything groundbreaking; in fact, i think i was better at web design when i was seven (i still can’t center a div). but there are no expectations here for what my site should look like, and that’s very freeing.

yes, sighs reluctantly, i still use social media. i have a deep parasocial bond with the tiktok algorithm, which you can read more about on my other posts, and i do want to see what my friends are up to. it’s unrealistic for me to assume everyone is just going to get up and leave these platforms. but,,,, i’ve taken a lot of what i tried and failed to do on different social media platforms and made it possible on my website. making this site helped me a lot with defining who i am outside the scope of brand-generated aesthetics defined by commodity consumption. it’s also just made me a lot happier as a person, because i am in my own little positive world and i decide what i interact with. i’m not being hyperbolic when i say it’s one of the best decisions i’ve ever made.

you should make your own website! encouragement!

i know i wrote a lot about how connected this project is to my coding background, and that is a lot of what motivated me personally. but it is a complete misconception that personal sites are just for programmers. (also, personal ‘brand’ sites made by software devs are BORING as hell!! stop letting them dominate the market share!!) we are living in a time where it is the easiest it’s ever been to learn how to code, or even to create a site without writing a line of code at all. on that note, i have to mention i don’t really support the no-code movement, because i think it’s limiting and takes away a lot of your creative freedom. seeing lines you type come to life in your web browser or phone is a great feeling. there are so many helpful guides and templates by people on neocities to help you start (i’ll add them here eventually). but if you need chatgpt to tell you how to start, use chatgpt. just try out making a site! it doesn’t have to look perfect and don’t compare your site to other personal sites. this is for you and it just has to make you happy.

social media conglomerates set limits on how you interact with the web. share your pictures on instagram, share little thoughts on twitter. network on linkedin. watch what Big Algorithm thinks you should watch. there is SO much more available online to you. you can literally do whatever you want. i’m making a shrine of my favorite characters and i change my page based on my mood, because that’s what i want to see when i open my computer. make your page neon green if that’s your favorite color and blast your favorite song when someone opens it. it’s okay if it’s ugly. website ‘good practices’ make everything uniform and gray. if you’re tired of people online saying they’re not reading all that, put it on your page. no one has to read it but you. FREE YOURSELF.

having a website is really fun, and the more people make websites and connect their pages to others, the closer we get to building a truly independent web. the internet is giant and all-encompassing, and you don’t need to visit the same 5 websites every day. you can define exactly how you choose to interact with it. don’t forget that!