I did not grow up with the old web. I was born in 2001. By the time I was old enough to start using the internet, the 2000s were already over. I remember my mother having a Myspace account, but I never saw it and it was replaced by a Facebook once Myspace was on its way out. Then Myspace just became an "old thing" joke. I never even knew much about it at all, until recently.

The earliest days of my internet usage were actually with my Nintendo 3DS's internet browser. Somehow, I stumbled into a forum on a quiz website, and I was active there for quite a while. Maybe a year or so, who knows.

There was a sense of community in a small place like that. Most people knew each other, or knew of each other. And I made friends there. It was nice. Eventually, I stopped being active there (my internet access was cut off pwp).

These days, since I got a smartphone, the way I have used the internet has been simpler. YouTube, Twitter, Reddit. Of course, I visit other websites too, but these are the applications I've had on my phone. If I'm bored, I can click on one of those and have a bunch of content shown to me without me having to put in any effort. It's easy.

Then I watched Serial Experiments Lain. (I could probably just end this page right there XD) It's a great anime. The way that the internet was portrayed in the show was very interesting to me. And the aesthetic of her room, with all of the wires, computers, monitors, and flashing lights, made an impact on me. It made me start to become interested in this sort of older technology.

A little while later, my friend introduced me to a website she found called gifcities. This website allows you to search for terms, and if they match to a gif file name on geocities, it will show the gif and you can click on it to go to the old website on web archive. We found one called The Otaku Web. It wasn't a particularly well-made website. It was pretty amateur. But something about how not well-made it was was very charming to me. I had never really seen any old websites before this.

This was a website that was made totally by one person. They had absolutely nothing to gain financially from it. They made it because they wanted to. I saw other old sites, too. They had galleries of images just there because they liked them. Links to pages that they just thought were cool. And there were also no disgusting fucking emojis.

All of this was foreign to me. And I realized that this type of web was immensely appealing to me. Maybe it didn't look as objectively pretty, but it was brimming with charm, and overflowing with personality.

Now I had this new interest. What to do? I could look for a while on the web archive to just browse old websites, I guess. But I wanted to do something more. I wanted to participate in it somehow.

And that's when my girlfriend introduced me to Neocities. A hidden little corner of the internet in which people reject the modern web and instead turn to creating their own websites from scratch. I browsed some of the sites here, and I became so excited by what I saw. It did not take me long at all for me to decide I wanted to be a part of it. So I started working.

And here we are. This website is my new home. A place that I can do whatever I want with, completely free from any outside influence. A place where I can showcase myself without shame. A place that, hopefully, others can visit someday who I can make friends with.

If you read this far, thank you. Have a beautiful night!