Why Does This Site Look Like This?

I don't like this future where music and paintings and stories are made by machines. No, generative AI won't ever stop creative people from creating but it will make it harder to cultivate an audience. It was already so difficult to get eyes on your work in a saturated market where books were looked at as 'resume-padders' and 'passive income'. And now with Ai pumping out millions of books/arts/songs every day it will become increasingly difficult to be heard above the noise. That's bad for you too, as a reader and consumer of art. One day soon 99% of the articles you read will be AI-generated, 99% of the music on Spotify will be AI-generated, and 99% of the books available for purchase on Amazon will be AI-generated. What kind of effect do you think that will have on society? How will you cope?

Consider that most artists don't want to make it big and get lots of money - they just want people to see the things they create.

I cope by withdrawing a bit from the internet, allowing my social media profiles to sit fallow for longer and longer periods of time, holding it all at arms lenght. I leave my phone at home more and more often to detach from the greater sphere of toxicity that the world wide web has become. With the addictive algorithms of these social sites already having done so much damage to the world, and the incessant push onto us of AI by Big Tech, I'd rather just stop using their products altogether.

The Indie Web is the anti-social media hemisphere of the internet. There are no 'likes' beyond the things you like that you choose to share with the world. There's little clout to be found beyond designing a cool web page that others talk about. There's often nothing to buy and nothing to consume, but there are lots of things to see and do. One gets around via 'web-rings', an ancient method of travel. AI, NFTs or cryptocurrency aren't often topics of intense conversation. There's no algorithms or ads or cookies that track you across the internet. Web design harkens back to a simpler time: You may remember Geocities or other 'bring your own code' webhosts that reigned supreme before everyone started using the same boring Wordpress layout.

If this sounds like something you would like to investigate for yourself, assembled in the sidebar are a number of interesting places I've found on the indie web. I'll update this periodically as I discover more cool things. Most of these sites are hosted by NeoCities or Nekoweb and adhere to their design philosophies.