bombs in bottles
(This post was written for the IndieWeb Carnival)
https://indieweb.org/IndieWeb_Carnival
https://lifeofpablo.com/blog/self-expression-indieweb-carnival-march-2025
When I read "self-expression," in the context of the small/indie Web, my first thought was MelonLand:
If you haven't had the experience, MelonLand is like every Neocities page at once. It's the pure artistic joy of Web 1.0 on steroids, as a mass artistic self-expression project.
MelonLand screams "the small Web is FOR and ABOUT self-expression!" And if you compare my site to MelonLand, you might think I missed that memo.
http://drmollytov.dev
//drmollytov.smol.pub
I mean, yeah, there's CSS now. I added that yesterday with the sole purpose of making the HTML site look more like the Gemini site does in Lagrange. It's CSS designed to make the reader experience what it's like to read my site on a protocol that does not support CSS.
(The only reason I don't strip out the CSS entirely is that I find HTML's default styling nigh unreadable. I can't expect anyone else to want to look at my site if I don't.)
There are many forms of self-expression. Mine has always been the written word. While I love MelonLand and the panoply of "Web as digital art showcase" options available by browsing Neocities or Marginalia Search, the visual arts have never been my preferred mode of self-expression. Writing is.
This is why I liked Gemini from the moment I encountered it. It's also why I'm warming to Gopher. Both emphasize the value and beauty of digital interconnectivity as a way to share writing, and to connect written works to one another, across vast distances of time and space.
Insofar as I even like HTML or CSS, I like them for accessibility reasons. I didn't bother to learn HTML beyond the basics until I discovered documents could be marked up to make my meaning as clear to a screen reader as to a pair of eyeballs. I didn't get interested in CSS until I started thinking about how style can be used to supplement meaning within the written word. Like how you absolutely will get the Lagrange experience reading my site via HTTPS, because I have CSS-decreed it so.
There's a lot out there already on the small Web as a place where people write about their very human lives and other very human people read that writing and connect with one another as humans. I don't need to rehash that here. What I'm loving about the small Web is the way its easy support of writing is reconnecting me with my own humanity - through my first and deepest love, the written word.
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