[boca_honey]

Exactly. Have you noticed that most of these 'weird web' sites don't actually talk about anything besides the web itself? Every other 'indie web' site I stumble upon is just about the indie web.... or worse, just a list of links pointing to other similar sites.

There’s no real value here. No new info, no original content. Just clunky web design and rants about 'social media bad.'

That’s not how the web actually was. Everyone used to bring something to the table, instead of just talking in circles about the table itself.

[manuelmoreale]

You are clearly not browsing enough of these “weird web” sites if that’s your take. Or the only ones you’re clicking on are the ones that are posted here on HN.

Try search something on https://wiby.me for example and then tell me if all you get are people writing about the web.

[boca_honey]

You might be right. Almost all the 'weird web' stuff I’ve seen was through HN posts, so I got the idea that it was all just meta, edgy rejects with Bluesky accounts.

I spent a couple of hours on wiby.me browsing sites at random and it was amazing. Thank you for that.

However, 95% of the sites there haven't been updated in 15+ years. In fact, none of the 20+ sites I found through the 'surprise me' feature had any updates since the late 2000s (though I’m sure some out there have).

It gives me the impression that this 'let's get the web back' movement is mostly nostalgia. Culture happens where it happens, not where it should happen. Today, that place is unfortunately a walled garden controlled by corporations. I hope that changes, but judging by these websites, that change isn't happening yet.

[manuelmoreale]

> It gives me the impression that this 'let's get the web back' movement is mostly nostalgia. Culture happens where it happens, not where it should happen. Today, that place is unfortunately a walled garden controlled by corporations. I hope that changes, but judging by these websites, that change isn't happening yet.

So I think the overall situation is a bit more nuanced than that. I am someone who's very much in the "let's bring the old-school web back" camp but I mean that in a conceptual sense. I strongly believe that the web would be, overall, a much better place if people were all tending to their own websites, interacting with each other via email or forums. It's a slower, more deliberate way to exist in this digital space.

But all that doesn't imply we also need to ditch modern tech and go back making sites with FrontPage and table layouts. And it also doesn't mean we can't have "modern looking" websites. The two things can coexist.

At the same time, there are people who like the 90s web aesthetics, but they also spend their time posting shit on Instagram. That's just nostalgia and personally I don't care about that part.

I do know for a fact that it's possible to get the good parts of the old web back. I know it because I experience it daily. I have a blog that's powered by a modern CMS. Yet it has no JS, no tracking, no fancy features. People can get my content via RSS (and a lot of people do), they can leave a message in my guestbook, they can poke around my blogroll and they can click around and be redirected to other blogs run by people who, like me, believe a better web is possible. I also get emailed daily by people who simply want to connect in a way that feels more authentic.

That's the part of the old school web I want back. But it's also a part that never went entirely away.

> Culture happens where it happens, not where it should happen. Today, that place is unfortunately a walled garden controlled by corporations.

You're right which is why I genuinely believe that in the context of the web, not having a presence on social media and having a personal site instead is today's counterculture. And we need more people to embrace that.

[rchaud]

people have never posted weird shit on Instagram. Pinterest maybe, but not Instagram. I have been on it since the early days. It is either milquetoast "pics from my vacation" or influencer garbage. Even normal people do not post there anymore because Meta has flooded the feeds with a 100:1 ratio of ads and influencer material relative to friends' posts.

[rchaud]

> However, 95% of the sites there haven't been updated in 15+ years.

You just explained why those sites are amazing. The pressure to update sites is what starts the slow descent into personal op-ed oblivion. These are sites, not blogs. The bloggification of the web is what made sites suck.

https://stackingthebricks.com/how-blogs-broke-the-web/

[manuelmoreale]

Some people in 2026 are still updating sites the old school way: https://brisray.com

Ray's a great example, he even has a lovely page about webrings: https://brisray.com/utils/webrings.htm

Was very happy to have him as a guest on my series if you want to know more about the story of his site: https://manuelmoreale.com/interview/ray-thomas

That said, I don't entirely agree with the point of the article you linked.

What made the web suck was money imo. If the incentive is to keep posting to get views and those views are translated into money, then yeah, there's no incentive to keep things static. But on today's web, blogs aren't the only option. Plenty of people prefer to have digital gardens, which I think are a lot more close to old school sites.

[dandelionv1bes]

Haven’t seen Wiby before but it’s fantastic, thank you.

[manuelmoreale]

My pleasure. Will throw a few more links your way, just in case you want to keep surfing:

[0] https://wildwild.directory [1] https://cloudhiker.net [2] https://theuselessweb.com

[peterldowns]

Haven't updated it in a while but here's my attempt at bringing something to the table, you might find it interesting. https://freezine.xyz/

[rozap]

Both things can be true. It's true there's a whole circle jerk around complaining about how the web used to be better, and the much of indie web movement is just talking in circles about this phenomenon.

It is also true that Facebook and its ilk did destroy huge swaths of the online community. Example: I'm a automotive tinkerer, and online forums used to be a rich source of information, community, crazy builds...people actually creating stuff for the sake of creating. All that is gone now and the purity of an open space to put creative pursuits has been infiltrated with perverse engagement incentives, ads, algorithmic curation and the like.

I get what you're saying, but it doesn't mean that OP is wrong even if you find it exhausting.

[GaryBluto]

You've captured my thoughts better than I could. It feels very much like these projects are cargo cults. The strange (and always off-feeling) attempts to recreate badly-written Geocities websites (out of all the aspects of the 2000s internet to recreate, why such a narrow and dull target?) that are posted here feel very much like how the Melanesians built fake airstrips and conducted pseudo-military drills to attract "cargo", which is in this case is a confused and distorted concept of the "old web".

[iammjm]

It seems like literature suffers a similar fate: it feels like at least 50% of all non-fiction books are about writers trying and struggling to write their next book. Unable to create something interesting and/or worthwhile, we naturally fallback into some meta-bullshit