2026年??月??日 ???

つづく...

2026年08月18日 World Wide Home

Summing up how I feel about the internet is pretty difficult, but my feelings about the small web or "indie web" are pretty clear.

I live in the United Kingdom, which has been hit with new waves of internet censorship. At first it was age verification to view pornographic content. It's hard to argue against it without sounding like you're trying to advocate for children to view porn, but it was an almost comically obvious trojan horse. Soon after this, multiple websites (Spachey, Imgur) stopped allowing users from the UK to use their services and social media sites started barring certain content from being shown. It's fine. I can use a VPN. I could go on a whole spiel about the dangers this brought internet users, especially minors, but this isn't about that right now.

Now in a new show that is apparently supposed to be against Big Tech, British users of social media will soon be forced to verify their age in order to use social media accounts such as Instagram, Twitter, etc. As I said, my thoughts on big social media and how the internet revolves around a few big companies is muddy but the truth remains that my job is pretty dependant on social media. Showing your ID to a 3rd party Palantir sponsored website that promises to delete your data? What a win!!

I could go on, and one day I will go on about it, but right now there's a clawing feeling tugging at my chest just thinking about it and typing it. I feel like I'm watching democracy and freedom and this wild west internet fall out of the palms of my hand. Maybe it was never there to begin with.

And now we return to the Small Web.

I've been on the internet for quite some time now. I've been surfing the web since 2009 believe it or not, the golden age for a child to be online (with it's risks). I won't pretend to have been there for Geocities, in fact I came online just as the death toll rang, but I do still remember a time when websites were still in mode and social media had started to replace them as The New Thing. It's hard to say I miss something that I wasn't fully present for but I will try to explain why I advocate to Look Back for the Future.

Let me start off by stating that this is not about the aesthetics. I don't find myself fussed with the idea of "webcore", inbred reimagining of "frutiger aero", or whatever trend comes after that nostalgia baits us all to death. Listen, I'm an artist and human being, of course I love when things look beautiful or when a website looks interesting and the webmaster has a good eye for design. But much of this is due to the blank canvas that html offers in comparison to traditional social media. A website with a basic design might have more to say than a website with a 100 pngs flashing, it also might not.

The small web provides information and insight without ads, without age verification and without a Big Tech corp following you around tracking your every move (maybe). The websites that I come across are there because someone had something to share or at the very least because they want to be there. With websites there's no instant gratifying loop that comes with scrolling, watching users fight, seeing something you absolutely despise. It's just you and what the webmaster wants you to read and maaybe a guestbook. This doesn't mean that the indie web will cure your screen time, if anything it just turns your social media addiction into an internet addiction. What can I say, clicking links it fun.

Arguably, the archetype of a indie webmaster is an anime lover who is perhaps a little isolated (see: this website). This was prevalent during the reign of Geocities and continues to be true now, but it's not all otaku folk here. Clicking a link can send you anywhere. My most recent interest found me through a site called Wizardnet.net. How I came across Wizardnet I couldn't tell you, maybe through a radio webring, all I know is that they introduced me to WebSDR, which then bolstered my interest not only in amateur radio but analogue amateur radio. Within a week I had gone from occasionally tuning into Montreal's n10.as radio to fine tuning someone's radio receiver across continents to listen in live to amateur hobbyists communicating to each other to live broadcasts from the Democratic Republic of Korea in Spanish. On one of my calls with my friend Tansha, we spent the good part of an hour trying to decode a morse code signal for a maritime radio station somewhere in North America, and though we didn't understand what they were on about, it in itself was highly rewarding. We didn't have to pay for these sites, nor was there any advertising. It was just radio enthusiasts offering up their services, to share their passion. All this is to say that the indie web is much more than personal pages detailing someone's favourite media. It's radio stations, forums, science projects, articles. If you look for it you will find it.

So what's my thesis?

I want to help build a web community that is meaningful and longlasting. I want to build a world wide web that isn't controlled by a few powerful companies. I want to use a world wide web that isn't censored by governments. I have no interest in AI, nor do I have interest in the cultural necrosis of feel-good nostalgia for a time that I wasn't even there for. The indie web should work for 21st century users and evolve while staying true to the core principles that drew users to it in the first place. And maybe surprisingly, above all, I believe in focusing on in person third spaces now more than ever.


This was a bit of a stream of consciousness, I hope it was coherent, even if it wasn't tied together perfectly. I do really care about this whole web stuff, it's what made me want to pursue animation in the first place. In future I want to share some articles about this topic further as well as make a whole blog post about my love for radio so stay tuned (get it?). In the meantime, I think everyone should try their hand at making a website, and if you already have one but don't really use it then I encourage you to use it to your potential! Anyway here's some reccommended reading of actually good writings surrounding the topic:

This Webpage is Designed to Last by Jeff Huang (2019)
Neocities and the Lack of Passion by Mariteaux (2016). Yes, it's the famous Neocities think-piece, still as relevant in 2026 as it was in 2016. Although as of writing this my website is still in its infancy- 1 month and still going- it has served as a motivator to keep this going and to try and develop this place into something that one day people will find useful.
The Issue of Stealing on Neocities by Suni (2022). Seeing as a friend of mine has had her entire website code stolen yesterday, this seems pretty relevant. This blog post speaks about web design as an actual art, and it's not just limited to Neocities.

Currently watching: Begin Again (2013)

Currently feeling: A bit anxious about "It All"

2026年08月02日 CD Party

Best friend's birthday party in a week, looking through charity shops for an outfit for her and ended up persuing the CD section. They had Dance Party 2013 for £2 with such classics as PJ & Duncan's 'Lets Get Ready to Rumble', Little Mix 'DNA' and of course PSY's Gangnam Style. They also had a buy one get one free offer so as I kept looking I found Best of Sade, for free! Now if only I could find my aux cord...

Today I had one of my 8 hour catch-up calls with my friend, Tansha. We met last year during my exchange programme, we went to France together for 2025 Annecy which at this point in time was the last time we met in person. I told him about this website and introduced him to the indie web and explained why I liked it so much. While clicking from site to site, I came across an archive of gifs from the days of Geocities, a website host similar to Neocities that ran from 1994-2009. After looking through some Italian gifs, we searched up Singaporean gifs and came across a gif referencing a nearby Singaporean university- a collection of images of photos of a man working at the lab.

Obviously, we needed to know more about this man. Clicking on the link brought us to a humble website with another beautiful gif, the links to his CV, his rearch as well as his boss's website. Unfortunately all dead links lost to time. The website was from 2002, we had his full name and his place and field of study. We found ourselves incredibly charmed by this snapshot into his life, and he's from Singapore too? It's a small country, we were sure we could find him 24 years later.

Searching his name mostly brought up research papers he had authored, and many, MANY papers that cited his work. We did find an obituary, but it was for a Chinese born American resident with the same name as him. He wasn't on the Singaporean university's faculty anymore, but as we comtinued searching we found that he hadn't just worked in there, but had also worked in Japan. His surname was Chinese, but not a very common surname for Chinese Singaporeans leading us to wonder whether he was originally from China and had returned home.

The more we searched, the more of a picture we got of this man's life. We found his colleagues, his papers, his universty work. But it all led to a dead-end, we traced him across countries but couldn't anything new about him past 2012.

Then we found it. His first university had a list of alumni and there he was, with his colleague in Japan. It was an American university. The same American university listed in the obituary that we had wrote off. He had died in 2014. I don't know why I didn't want to believe it was him. Throughout our search for the owner of this website showing his joyous time in Singapore, I learnt a lot about a man I had never met. We found his artwork, learnt about his research, his hobbies, his friends.

It's hard to describe the feeling I got when we found this out, I can only wish his family well. I hope that all the people still citing his work today as well as two well meaning idiots finding joy in the website he made in 2002 brings him some peace wherever he is today.

Certain names and places have been purposefully ommitted from this story to maintain the privacy of the individuals involved. Please respect this.