It’s been two months since Elon Musk bought Twitter, and the social media app’s death is fast approaching. But, the question of what social media will replace it remains unanswered.
Some have proposed Mastodon, a “privacy-focused” app, as a potential solution, but for now it’s only known as one of many Twitter replacements. With the resurgence of late 2000s and early 2010s nostalgia among teenagers, many ex-Twitter users have flocked to Tumblr, but it seems unlikely the site will ever become a serious home for celebrities, corporations, or government officials. TikTok and Instagram provide alternative social media options, but don’t quite parallel Twitter in terms of format. And while those who use Twitter primarily as a local news site may switch over to Facebook, it doesn’t seem like Facebook’s doing anything for teens and young adults in search of a new place to share a piece of themselves with strangers on the Internet.
And, sure, you could go to any of those websites and apps. Most people will. But if you’re looking for something different, if you tire of the fast-paced content machine of modern social media, it might be time to look backwards to find the future of the Internet. Or at least, the future of the Internet for nerds and subcultures.
From 1994 to 2009, anyone with a computer and a little bit of HTML could publish whatever they wanted on their very own website, freely hosted by GeoCities. Before GeoCities, if you wanted something on the Internet, you had to pay a monthly fee for some space on a web server. GeoCities, along with similar companies, was the solution. A small amount of web space for free, and a monthly fee for more storage space. And the GeoCities model worked, at the time– by the mid-to-late 1990s, GeoCities was the third most popular website on the Internet, second only to Yahoo and AOL. It hosted sites on any number of topics, from water rockets to the weather in Georgia to astrology, connected in communities through GeoCities itself.
(Of course, the sites were a lot less polished than the kind you’re likely to find nowadays.)
GeoCities was shut down in 2009, much to the disappointment of digital archivists and other fans of the site. But this was not the end of the indie Internet. In 2013, Kyle Drake created NeoCities, a replacement to its predecessor. While initially created to host sites lost in the downfall of GeoCities, NeoCities has grown in popularity on its own today. In 2015, the site hosted around 56,000 sites. Today, that number reaches over 500,000.
On NeoCities, there is no character limit, no restriction, no pre-set format, and no predatory algorithm– you are allowed the creativity and freedom to make your space on the Internet yours, and explore the parts of the Internet without ads or algorithms. And don’t let the coding scare you, NeoCities users like Sadgrl.online offer pre-made layouts for free, and HTML/CSS crash courses are available all over the Internet. Even if you’re still intimidated by the idea of creating your own site, take a look at some of the sites hosted by Neocites. It’s an interesting look at the ghost of Internet past that’s not exactly dead yet.
Despite my love of NeoCities, it is, regrettably, unlikely that indie web development will ever reach its former height. But you never know– with Twitter on its deathbed, and 2000s nostalgia on the rise, maybe it’s time to make your own site.
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