25/10/11 - on the value of the web

for a time, being fed up with the commercial web as were many others have retreated to gemini, i wanted to ditch the mainstream web as much as possible.

while i knew that gemini was never intended to replace the web, it was difficult initially to conceive of the web as something that could be used in any other way, since i'm a zoomer who grew up knowing only the commercial and corporate web.

as i've learned more about the indieweb, i've (as is usually the case with most new things i discover) mellowed out my position somewhat.

of course there's nothing wrong with the protocol itself, even if it's often used to transport bloated masses of trackers and ads and brainrot.

while i love gemini, and there are a lot of things that i would probably only write about on here, it's obviously not the place for anything intended to reach a larger audience.

that is, of course, the beauty and appeal of it. but if i want to create something _useful_ for as many people as possible, it must necessarily go on the web.

even places like yout*be, corporate and bloated as it may be, are still home to beautiful works of human expression and thought, and worth visiting from time to time (once appropriately filtered through invidious and newpipe, of course).

i still want to stay off of the corporate web as much as possible, of course. but there is an undeniable usefulness to the reach that larger platforms have, that is likely not replicable without the greed of big tech.

what a nonsensical world we live in.

contact me at: tsukaj@tilde.club