After a few years of writing nonsense on neocities, it’s time to move on. neocities picture
It’s not like neocities is only meant for blogging. It just often ends up that way, since its “your corner of the web” after all.
And it’s comfortable. It’s obscure – it’s a place for those not so outspoken to share their day-to-day and whatever interests. An uncomfortable trend in the more prevalent social networks is to merge your real life identity with virtual – and thus be subject to a continual witch-hunt which shifts values every few years despite your timeline staying the same and tied to you.
There aren’t many online social places for dilettante blogging. Substack is too professional, most social media sites tend toward snippets of text. I mean, frankly, blogging is dying beyond tech-circles – at least as far as I’m aware. Maybe it’s flourishing in places I’ve never seen, though in my limited vision the only social media that supported longer form and nonsense posting without much repercussion was, of course, Neocities.
While lurking you may pick up some of the neocity ideals. To wear perseverationist badge, parade around the 2000s aesthetic, give little likes to the flow of others updates and share some vague thoughts of a new rebellion in the midst of this one; maybe some new idealisms. It’s pretty great.
So why am I leaving?
My first foray into neocities was many years ago. It was the place where I learned how to make a website. A “start page” where you open up your browser and it has a nice interface of all your frequented places. Using position: absolute; in a beautiful ignorance of “responsive web design” – liberating.
Many things happened since and more than a few years back I made a new site. This was after living in an isolation of no social media accounts, no desire to text. But the funny thing is the persistent human inclination to want to express something. At least work out ones’ thoughts. So I registered and wrote.
I wrote and wrote and eventually found a strange despair after about ~50 posts. I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was a bridge to nowhere. It helped with learning how to write, and maybe that’s enough, but after that it increasingly felt like any other social platform.
Talking through people.
Talking about ideals even though it doesn’t matter that much; your life won’t change much.
Complaining rarely solves anything, and yet journals are filled with it – including mine at times.
And even though the pseudonymous nature of neocities is a comfort, it’s a thorn which persistently presses into one that once you hang your coat, it’s over. All the updates of who you follow disappear. You’re still in your room the same as you ever were.
After deleting the first website, after a few months I tried making another one. Again, good writing practice. But even the same suffocation latched on. So I deleted that one. Then I made another one. And deleted that one. The cycle keeps repeating.
I just can’t find an answer to the pointlessness. What was once a simple way to iron out thoughts becomes a sisyphus task once the pointlessness infects. Being able to express freely is so nice as long as you forget you’re shouting into a void where you may hear other voices but you can only listen. One only forgets it all by taking a long break.
For a good bunch, neocities is a place of commercialized rebellion. No different than any other social media platform. Except instead of rebelling against typical opinions around world events one rebels against the rebels themselves. You’ll find desires around not being locked into another platform. Or to take a break from social media and settle for janky comments sections. To find a more permanent place in the ephemeral web, sermons circulating of making websites last in an attempt to rebel against being swallowed in the vortex of the ever quicker virtual realms where yesterday is a thousand years ago.
With my current website I, again, feel the pointlessness creeping in. Why wouldn’t it? A lot of what I write is strange, abstract, amateur – and nothing necessarily that new. Reiterating whatever else helps grapple with modern existence and alienation. In my later iterations I at least learned not to ruminate.
Neocities to me is this local maximum, but I’m ready to venture out now. If I’m done with neocities, what’s next?
Well, you’re watching it. Instead of neocities, I’ll try out YouTube. Because instead of practicing writing, I’d like to practice making videos.
If you want to learn how to make a website, or to practice writing, I heavily suggest making a neocities website. It’s a welcoming place, despite my void depictions earlier. It’s a welcoming place, a place to write amply – it’s just no longer for me.
See you in the next one.