I believe in a web that's free, personal, messy, expressive, and undeniably human.

It's important to maintain spaces that are free from the influence of large, corporate platforms. This site is my little way of pushing back against the sterile, monetized, and commercialized internet of today.

Not to sugarcoat it: the internet of the 90s to the early 2000s could be a cruel, messed-up place. It wasn't amazing all the time. Crass, tasteless, gross humor was constant and ever-present. It was far too easy to stumble upon wildly inappropriate pictures as a kid.

A lot of people were at least a little openly homophobic or racist. You couldn't expect to have a good time in a multiplayer game if you were openly a girl or woman. You could find hate groups online if you looked for them.

Then there were niche spaces where you could find kindred spirits, and that's where the magic happened, because you were usually pretty psychologically safe with these peers. You shared about your lives, you didn't have to appeal to everybody, and you had ways to find each other across websites via guestbook entries, web rings, and links.

That's all to say, we shouldn't go back to that exact version of the internet, but the spirit of those niche communities should return.

When social media became the go-to way of expressing ourselves and finding others online, we sought out niche spaces again, and we found some semblance of them on Facebook, Twitter, etc. However, these spaces within social media sites were so accessible and easy for anyone to find, they'd be frequently invaded by people who joined just to abuse everyone there. On top of that, when you're forced to use your real name, it exposes you to possible harassment offline by bad actors.

Social media companies decided to no longer spend money keeping users safe and moderating their platforms, so that dashed any illusion of a psychologically safe community for everybody.

That's a clear sign we have to build our own.