I figure there’s no better way to start an old internet styled website than to ramble about the recent resurgence in old internet aesthetics and nostalgia, or at least me appreciating it a lot more recently. I think it’s easy to just dismiss it as purely nostalgia, similar to the popularity of 80’s/90’s aesthetics in the 2010’s and the more recent rise in Y2K aesthetics in general. To some degree, it’s just Gen Z starting to feel nostalgia for the days spent on the early web doing things like sitting at a family computer playing flash games for hours on end. Or in my case, using doll creators as a dress up game for hours on end. It can just be dismissed as the current nostalgia cycle at play. But the rapid technological advancements associated with the early to late 2000’s adds a more interesting layer to the nostalgia, especially considering the state of technology and social media now. Everything is homogenous, AI is scary, there’s an inherent lack of fun and exploration that a lot of early internet provided, and how we get to engage with the internet is dictated by billionaires (often exceptionally stupid ones).

That’s not to be a complete downer about social media and the creative endeavors of people who are creating cool things and experimenting with what our current technology could do. But I think old internet aesthetics open a lot of people up to a world of “what could have been” if that makes sense. Going back to when things felt a little more technologically primitive allows us to mess around with creating things that are more personalized than current social media platforms provide. It also allows escaping the realities of late stage capitalism that is inherently felt while browsing through things like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. There’s always ads being presented to you, always a large logo of a company owned by a billionaire staring at you, and always an algorithm to try and figure out how to get ahead of. It can feel exhausting at times, and personally, I know it can make me feel like I’m creatively unfulfilled and lacking a sense of actual community.

I’ve personally always felt like I’m just a lurker on social media, even when I was younger. I was too riddled with anxiety to ever post anything to any social media site or even interact with any online communities (unless you count the endless hours spent on Club Penguin). Only as an adult did I start using Instagram, and my inexperience with how to post stuff feels to me like it really shows.

Modern social media feels like a muscle that had to be worked over the years by people to be “good” at it. Even though in reality it’s not a competition, not to most people at least. And yet it feels like the growth mindset is rampant on social media now, especially if you post about any art or personal interest. Where in the past people just posted what they enjoyed without having to worry about growing an audience, or profiting from their interests in the same influencer-like capacity. I get pretty bombarded with random people messaging me about growing my brand image, and it's so exhausting and makes me feel like I’m just not doing social media right. A lot of these are bots of course, and that’s a whole other issue with social media currently. But it leaves social media feeling like a system to gain rather than an outlet to enjoy.

Obviously I think old web stuff looks cool, and that is a big appeal to me. But also having something that feels a bit more me than a generic Instagram account that I have to figure out the right way to fill in the blanks for helps alleviates anxiety on what I’m posting. This sort of aesthetic approach to interacting with the internet brings me a lot of comfort. I know one app that has tried to bring back a slight feeling of that is noplace. But beyond the top 10 friends feature which is very much inspired Myspace it felt pretty void of personalization for me. It’s still very much formatted in modern social media formatting that I wasn’t a huge fan of layout-wise. Regardless, it's still cool to see that people are trying to change things up a little and I think it shows that there's a longing for something different.

There’s so many niche aesthetics that fit into the old internet/technology genre that have become more popular in the past few years. My personal favorite being Frutiger Aero, which immediately gives me this weird feeling of walking around in a Best Buy in my local mall as a kid in 2007, or browsing the Wii Shop Channel for old games. The fun splashes of blues, greens, and sea motifs with white glossy technology somehow felt so futuristic at the time and now just feels so sadly optimistic about what the future could have been. Not that I had expected/wanted the future to be full of fish swimming out of computer screens, but the rather lifeless minimalist designs that have been prominent the past few years have kind of crushed the fun this late 2000’s aesthetics evoked.

What’s kind of funny is that nostalgic aesthetics like Frutiger Aero also are pretty inherently tied to capitalism too. I associate my feelings for it with large companies and the products being sold to me as a child. But I suppose the only difference was that those companies didn’t feel all consuming at the time like they do now. Since everything is now managed by a handful of large companies it feels like there isn’t nearly as much variety with what we get to see in technology. It’s crazy to think about even how much customization there used to be on other platforms that are now void of character like Youtube or Facebook. I only just remembered how insane annotations on Youtube could get and how much they added to old videos as well as channel customization.

There isn’t much of a point that I’m trying to make here and others have already said a lot of this stuff far better. But it feels good to articulate why I’ve felt really nostalgic for this stuff recently, especially given the current tech and social media landscape. Even though I don't know anything about html, making this page was so much fun and more fulfilling creatively than any social media I've ever used and it's also just comfortingly nostalgic.

7/25/2024