My good friend over at Concrete Lunch sent me a very interesting article about de-branding and degrowth of one’s web presence and how it is more important than ever to embrace an older way of thinking about using the web as a way to share ideas instead of a way to build a persona.

I have been using some version of the internet since the days of CompuServe and BBS software. This predates Mosiac, AOL, and the World Wide Web. We got by on email, IRC, USEnet, and DOOR games. No one had a persona although we may have had handles. There was no clout. There was no like button. You sought out your people, made your clan of regulars and traded files, photos, and .txt. Eventually, we all learned HTML or found Geocities and webrings It was fun and still in the days before the Muggles came. Once they did, social media was the next logical step.

We slowly began to see our playground grow weeds.

The hype around “Web 2.0” brought money and control. Friendster, MySpace, and a young Facebook entered in the early 2000s. Flash video and terms like “Information Architect” took over web places. With the exception of maybe 2002 - 2007 and the early blogging years, the majority of the internet became a product. Soon, blogs became The Blogosphere and mainstream media, cults of personality, and persona writers took over that space. The little of the old web that was left was forced underground while the pablum of the Facebooks, Instagrams, and TikToks of the world took over and made the users their product and the algorithm their god.

We failed as early gatekeepers. We should have fought them.

Now, with the advent of Federated Services, we can reclaim our corner. We can take off the fake skins of brand and persona and re-embrace the small web. We can write and post and share without a shareholder meeting deciding to push us down the pecking order. The little I pay each month for this platform, micro.blog, and the joy I have in reading through what I see on Mastodon has spurred a creative resurgence in me. I am writing more, taking more photos of interesting things, making silly gaming maps, and musing about the things I love with the same energy I felt in those early web days.

I spend little time on mainstream social media these days except for NeverWas Skateboarding. I post “proof of life” on Instagram once in a blue moon. I avoid Muskspace like the plague and have no patience for the brain rot of TikTok. I fear that even the new kid on the block and press darling, Bluesky, is just a ticking time bomb before they get too big and greedy. Hopefully, I am wrong there. I am just happy keeping a minimal presence and curating heavily with a good dose of Posse (Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere).

We have not lost what we started. We found it again and maybe this time we can keep it.