I'm having fun online again
I'm having fun online again.
I've been building a webpage for the blog, which I've named THE FUN ZONE. You can access it here.
While building a collection of 88x31 buttons to display on the blog (you can view them by clicking the "click me!" button displayed on desktop, or visit THE FUN ZONE), I went through a lot of cool pixel, graphic, button, stamp, blinkies, etc archives (you can see the ones I've used on my credits page). I even made my own email button; eventually, I'll make a button to advertise my blog too.
I finally had more than enough buttons, but I wanted to keep exploring the web. So I started going through and finding gifs and images to collect. I've spent a lot of time browsing fun static sites on Neocities and Nekoweb. Many of them feature pages just for images, whether it's art, .gifs, .pngs, memes, aesthetic pictures, etc. It's sort of like a digital scrapbook.
I've been obsessed with finding more and more images. Lately I've been hopping on Tumblr and Pinterest. I'm really into the weirdcore and webcore aesthetics right now.
Today I was on glitter-graphics.com for an hour or two just browsing. Manually typing in anime that I used to watch and clicking through pages and pages of .gifs. The "emo" tag was a blast from the past, too. It was the sort of stuff I did as a kid, like when I'd watch AMVs on YouTube or spend ages trying to find the best desktop wallpapers. I don't know. It's just fun for the sake of it.
I was talking to my wife the other night about it, and she commented that so much of the internet nowadays is about trying to make a statement or get views or consumption and whatever else. There's very little about it that feels "fun". The indie web brings back that feeling of exploration and fun for me, at least. Idk. I think everyone should make their own web pages to dump whatever they want.
I'm gearing up to switch jobs and preparing for a UK visit next month, but sometime in May or after I want to start building my own website I think. I had sooo much fun building this silly little page for my blog. Learning HTML and CSS is a lot of fun, too. The idea that I could just make an entire website!!! Ugh. I'd get addicted haha.
I'm not sure what I'd put on there tbh! But I think that's what's so fun about it. It's gonna be something super creative and personal.
I will definitely keep blogging here on Bearblog. I think I'll use my website to host specific things like my art and my creative writing. I wanna make lots of personal pages. I have an idea of making a music page that shows all my favorite albums and CDs and stuff. Then maybe another page that has my favorite video games. I also wanna make a page dedicated to the internet of my youth and link to modern day alternatives like SpaceHey, etc. The sky is the limit!
I encourage everyone to go explore more of the internet!! The less time I spend on centralized social media, the more fun I have. Even stuff like Mastodon is becoming sort of a drag. I think returning to static sites and personal blogs is the way to go.
✘ Posted on — 03/25/25
✘ Last modified — 4 months, 4 weeks ago
✘ Link — https://blog.xavierhm.com/im-having-fun-online-again