Hexbear is the last fun place on the internet
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Coming to hexbear feels like being able to breathe after holding my breath across the rest of the internet, which is truly a fascist cesspit, with the exception of a dwindling number of twitter accounts.
This is kinda a good description
digital kessler syndrome
nice.
Hexbear is the last fun place on the internet
I dunno what we are in now but the old web was better. 1.0 sucked. 2.0 was good though. You had all these nich communities bubbling with energy and ideas. Now it is just reddit and psyops and comodification.
Hexbears should help expand our creativity on the web, by taking inspiration from NeoCities (successor to GeoCities). Not everything has to be sterile and bland and boring. I’d even like to be able to customize our profile pages more than just things like the banner and profile picture. I mean, just look at how much life can be breathed into a site with so much flexibility. Look at all the colors and non-standard layouts. What the web as lost is personality, which we should be taking back. We’re on FOSS sites here in the Fediverse. We can do better, and we shouldn’t be too afraid to take risks by deviating from what’s accepted as “normal” these days.
We had way better tools for self-expression on older formats like early YouTube, MySpace, etc etc. We don’t have to stay the course of sterile, standardized, corporatized web formats.
The original point of using the web was making things beautiful and tinkering around with different designs. It was to tell a story with the layout. That was part of the content itself, not just what we say and do online.
Edit: https://yesterweb.org/ (on NeoCities) has plenty of good and interesting information on this general topic of a worse present web (a manifesto, if you will)
I’m still hanging on to my own website even though I have 0 visitors because I LIKE having something I’m totally in control of to post my stupid writing projects.
We all need our creative outlets. It’s good for our esteem to make stuff we like, that isn’t primarily intended to serve someone else.
I’ve made a couple sites too that I have saved for time capsule purposes, and I genuinely enjoy viewing them once in a great while.
https://fauux.neocities.org/ (CW: Epilepsy risk) (edited to the original)
epilepsy warning jfc
Terribly sorry, updated to include it.
thx
Of course. Again, I feel ashamed for not catching that the first time around, and apologize.
LETSALLLOVELAINLETSALLLOVELAINLETSALLLOVELAIN
The web has been monopolized into a handful of big tech sites that trap everyone inside. The enshittification runs deep.
The chilling thing is that it doesn’t have to be this way. There are still plenty of niche communities online. You can find web comics and blogs and hobby forums. But these all require some means of funneling people into them.
Where are the AlbinoBlackSheeps and ICanHazCheeseburgers and YDMNDs of yesteryear? They’re on TikTok and YouTube, rather than their own boutique platforms, because there’s no really good way to get people from Main Public Forum into your niche community.
One of the silver linings of Lemmy has been a nascent renaissance of this kind of community. Even then its predicated on creative folks contributing and participating and feeding on one another, like the goons over at Something Awful did. I kinda see that sort of thing with podcasts like E1 and Hello From The Magic Tavern. It feels harder to find but not impossible.
To be fair the method that existed before tiktok youtube and the like was either word of mouth via discussion boards or google itself.
I think the bigger problem here is actually that everyone is chasing money in some form, which means people aren’t creating content for fun. They’re chasing mass market. The problem with chasing mass market is that it reduces the quality of niche content that is designed solely and specifically to only appeal to fans of that niche. This content is only created by people doing it for fun, and it achieves the highest level of quality within its respective niche (but not for mass audience).
If you like a bunch of niche things while finding mass stuff terminally boring, this becomes a problem when all the niche things no longer have creators.
The other side of this is that people do still want to do it for fun, but don’t want to do it for fun on a platform for someone else to profit from. The platforms being for-profit deters people from using or contributing work to them, because why contribute your labour to someone else’s profit? Fuck them. (Fandom being an obvious example of this).
Everyone was happier on the internet when everyone was just kinda doing stuff.
I think the bigger problem here is actually that everyone is chasing money in some form, which means people aren’t creating content for fun. They’re chasing mass market. The problem with chasing mass market is that it reduces the quality of niche content that is designed solely and specifically to only appeal to fans of that niche.
I mean, idk. I don’t think the E1 guys are exactly targeted to the heart of consumerism. And I periodically do see things in the hobby space pop up that I marvel weren’t introduced earlier. Virtual Table Tops, for instance, are a thing that really hit their stride in the last five years. Maybe its just my corner, but I never fail to marvel at all the stuff that gets churned out that you’ll simply never see spoken of mainstream. Discord has been really good about keeping me in the loop on these hobbies. Reddit has too, to a lesser extent.
I agree you do really need to be in the loop to find the heart of the hobby, but that’s not exactly new. Its always a challenge in a niche community.
Everyone was happier on the internet when everyone was just kinda doing stuff.
I think they still are. The mainstream stuff is just a lot louder now, so finding the “cool kids doing their thing” signal in the “BUY ME! BUY ME! BUY ME!” noise is harder. But once you cut past it, you can tune all that other stuff out and just have fun with your friends.
it was real hit or miss, but it kinda makes me miss stumbleupon
i have depression
the internet does feel a lot more corporate than it did 10 years ago and especially 20 years ago. That sucks a lot of the fun out of it. Making money off of the internet was barely even a thing 15 years ago.
Check Hexbear
Pay bills
Order stuff
Watch a few youtube videos from select channels
Check email
Stream some show I don’t even watch off a russian piracy site, I just want the noise.
Check twitter for silly shit
That’s the entire internet.
Getting into meteorology because weather underground and staring at the sky are more interesting than the internet.
I used to spend an embarrassing amount of time each day following up on deranged Evangelical twitter users. Posted some of the worst takes to the dunk tank and would generally get worked up about things.
But I would never create an account because I’m not giving Twitter my phone number (that thing that easily identifies you to everyone and most people never change, which is why every website wants it).
So when Musk decided to not let people view twitter without an account, that part of my day just dried up. I wouldn’t say I’m happier but I really don’t miss it. Between that and the new algorithm here I’d like to think I’m spending less time online. I probably am, but I also find I do this exact thing a lot more (just open my browser and not knowing where I want to go, but I know I want to go somewhere)
https://nitter.net still exists for now, although if Musk follows through with requiring payment to use X, the whole site might collapse altogether
That just means more time to read theory!
Eh sometimes creative stuff happens on the internet, but it’s all so monetized or becomes full of inscrutable drama before it can get cool.
I’m not gonna say the internet used to be more democratic or open, because when I first started using it every website was run by some white male computer dork from Bellevue, Washington who wanted to share his love of pictograms or declarative programming languages.
But there was a wacky amount of variety you could stumble into. No one was trying to make money because there was money to be made. No one was trying to build a huge audience because there wasn’t one. Everything was niche and that was cool.
I thought I just had depression but no, the internet really does suck now
Nothing to do anymore but work, shitpost, and cook crack cocaine in the microwave.
Back to Basics
I think some niche youtube channels are fun, but it certainly is becoming a bore. If I had to guess, it probably is from everything being localized to a handful of websites and those are in turn optimized by an algorithm for profit instead of something enjoyable. The internet has been turned into what is addictive instead of fun.
My personal theory is that we are so detached from joy that many find “reaction videos” a source of amusement because we can’t feel excitement ourselves anymore, so people vicariously enjoy something “new” by watching someone else be very excited and happy about it.
I only really partake in interacting with people I don’t know on Hexbear, and anything else I leave exclusive to people I know in real life.
Its a fantastic reservoir of knowledge at your fingertips, but a terrible and inhuman way to interact with other humans. Much nuance and body language is not seen, and people essentially develop the same kind of anonymous rage they feel when driving a car except it is in front of a computer screen.
deleted by creator
I was watching some South Asian villagers react to the star wars prequels just before reading this comment because I find them so wholesome, I guess, even though who can say how genuine their reactions are. I don’t usually watch reaction videos but, at the time, there was nothing else I would rather be doing.
Reaction videos are an occasional guilty pleasure of mine. But I avoid channels that are explicitly about “reactions” because as UlyssesT said, they end up all being the same
reaction to different things.I do genuinely enjoy seeing people be excited and happy. But so much of that “industry” is fake. People either go over the top or provide nothing in addition.
I’m surprised all of you feel this way, sure you’re not all just growing up?
TikTok, Twitter, YouTube, illegal anime streams, illegal tv show streams, illegal movie streams, illegal PDFs of books, any type of music you can think of, looking at any type of art you can think of, reading people’s blogs, listening to podcasts, watching sports, etc. etc.
I recommend listening to the Joe Rogan Experience if anybody is getting bored of the internet. And try DMT while watching it
I recommend listening to the Joe Rogan Experience
Have you ever tried DMT?
I hate that Joe Rogan and Silicon Valley techbros ruined the reputation of DMT which really is profound.
This fucking bald imbecile indeed ruined like half the niche psych online communities due to his inane ramblings; he’s also spread falsehoods far and wide (like “DMT is produced by the human body in potentially psychoactive quantities” - it’s fucking not, it’s produced in minutes amounts likely as a neurotransmitter production’s side effect; or also “DMT is released when we die” - also complete bullshit)
And as for the experience, it really is profound. I like to link this article and this follow-up, both by Nick Sand, for newcomers
Has he ruined any communities? The ones I frequent rarely mention him except to make fun of him
I feel like McKenna has a more negative effect only because people try to cite his theories as if it were done under rigorous scientific methods
I’m probably exaggerating a bit, but it has led to an influx of very vocal new members sometimes fairly deaf to discussion to many of them
imo DMT is the worst psychedelic. 15 minutes that i barely remember? id much rather have a nice saturday LSD trip and have a full day of good vibes (most of the time)
I guess I’m easily entertained. I feel like there’s tons of shit on the internet. my latest thing is learning crafting techniques for making my own house decorations/art. there is an insane wealth of knowledge among everyone from MFAs to like crafty homemakers with cheap ways to stain, manipulate/shape, and transfer images to a variety of materials.
I’m currently eyes peeled for a transparent plastic globe I can tent with modge podge and food coloring to make my own pendant light fixture. but for now I’m painting a weird elephant I found at a shop for cheap, and then I’m gonna black wash it or maybe even dry brush it with metallics to make it look old and valuable.
