Rolfe's Ramblings

A few hours ago I used the Wayback Machine to find a single panel from a Super Mario fancomic that's been burned into my head for close to two decades now. I was overjoyed to finally find it, because even though the comic itself isn't too funny, the juxtaposition of the frustrated text and Toad's peaceful smile remains hysterical to this day.

It made me look back on the internet and how my use of it has changed over the years. I remember being a teen in the 00s and consuming a lot of fan content, a lot of it at poor quality by hobbyists just making silly stuff for fun. There were a handful of talented artists who became popular but by and large most of it was people who couldn't draw well, couldn't make jokes, just goofing around and having a good time showing what they made to the world.

And I remember surfing the web, finding the strangest websites on the most niche of subjects--and no, I don't mean weird porn. Everyone had Geocities or Angelfire, and for those of us whose parents would NEVER let them sign up for something like that, we had customizable Neopets pet pages. I don't remember doomscrolling through websites until 2013 when Tumblr (and many other sites) introduced endless scrolling, making it harder to keep track of how many posts you'd seen while browsing a site. (Believe me, having that tangible number count did wonders for realizing when it was time to get off a site and do something else)


As an adult, and especially as someone who wants to make my creative career work, I have to be entrenched in internet hustle culture to survive. I'm on TikTok, making videos every few days and hoping one of them goes viral so I can get my big break. I'm on Facebook, fishing for followers by being active in social groups that allow self-promo. I have a Buy Me a Coffee page and am lost on what kind of content to provide to potential patrons. And I've got Reddit for collecting a fanbase of my writing via r/writingprompts. (At one point I tried Twitter, but the constant stream of negativity on my feed caused me to close my account within the first three months.) You wouldn't believe how much I know about advertising and running a business now.

Fan content and art in general has become increasingly competitive. I no longer see newbies passing around their pieces like I used to; instead it's all about amassing likes, getting engagement for your socials, bumping up your SEO. And a lot of it is because anything that isn't already professional quality gets buried by the algorithm within a few minutes. I have to begrudgingly use the algorithm to advertise because word of mouth doesn't do it anymore, but man do I hate how it's a dominant force on every mainstream site.

Over the last year I've been diving into the small web with sites like Dreamwidth, as well as SpaceHey and lately Bzoink. My main homepage is PC only and labeled with a neocities tag on purpose. Could I make it look professional with a responsive web template and a real domain name? Sure, but that doesn't seem within the spirit of the movement. Maybe that makes me a little pretentious? I don't know. It does feel like a more organic internet experience, though, closer to how it was when I was growing up. Site browsing is a bit slower, but you can't doomscroll, and you're not given intrusive ads every two posts. It's nice.