December is my 2-year anniversary on Neocities and I've been thinking often lately about why I make sites. Web design and sharing through a personally built space has been one of my longest-running hobbies, a place I return to again and again, even after I can't see the point and "move on." I don't know if it keeps coming back to me, or if I keep going back to it. Every time I tried to take a break, it was finding someone's site, or finding a place like neocities, that made me want to get back into it.

I think it's simpler than some convoluted maze of experiences and inspirations. What it comes down to is that websites as a creative practice are one of the ways I understand myself.

Then vs Now

I grew up making websites in the 90s and 00s, a constant companion through my teens and 20s. The landscape in the 90s/early 00s felt different. To me it wasn't "better" or "worse," a qualifier that many people put in their webcore nostalgia posts. I was a different person then too, so it's hard for me to make blanket statements like that.

Back then, creative personal sites were everywhere and inspiration felt abundant. Everything was hand-made and people experimented constantly with frames, splash pages, webrings, pixels, and there was glitter everywhere.

Now, there's more transparency around copyright, fair use, and public domain resources. Accessibility is a known requirement rather than a niche concern. People continue to experiment, and there are also more tutorial sites, generators, and more places to go to help with testing and experience.

But templates rule the modern web. Outside of community spaces like Neocities, Nekoweb, and the Indieweb, everything looks the same, loads the same, and behaves the same. Carving out a corner in the internet that is intentionally handmade feels like reclaiming something in this landscape, and I'm excited I found the spaces where people have been doing it the entire time I stopped. Even if the design is simple, it belongs fully to that creator and what they wanted to express with the medium.

My projects = me learning how to say things

I analyzed my websites (then and now) and came up with a common denominator: All my sites are a way for me to learn how to write about something. How to write book/music reviews, how to explain a song, how to write about art, expression, growth, etc. How to translate feelings into words. How to get an idea out of my head visually without relying on techniques I don't know yet. When I make non-writing art (paint, collage, pixels, doodles), I'm learning how to express without words.

When I look at others' websites I see a poem, but when I look at mine I see a mess of ideas and language, but I think it's probably just as artistic.

I started thinking about this because I was wondering what this site (Max Crunch) really was. I call it a "playground," but it's a network of creativity. Even a simple hand-coded 1-page site explaining something from my life feels more intimate and vulnerable than anything I ever published using WordPress, which held most of my online expression in the 2010s. I love that I can open all my files offline and it all looks the way I intended. A website that exists with or without internet is a piece of art that can both be dynamic and static.

As I write this post, I'm learning how to express how I feel about websites as an artistic medium, but they are more than that. They are art and architecture: my website is a representation of my personal infrastructure. Through websites I've learned how to organize and maintain digital files, build content and navigation structures that serve myself and others, and how to track threads of long-term ideas. My websites are documentation of my creative impulses, showing the direction my brain is running, and letting me see the shape of my expression.

Breaking and Returning

It's the absence that reminds me that it's part of me. I've taken long breaks from making websites, sometimes because it felt socially isolating or because I drifted into phone-based habits. When Instagram was new it was a fun and exciting way to share photos easily, instead of making gallery-driven sites or posts that required manual updates. I kept WordPress sites as photo albums and it was SO much effort. The funny thing is that I often took breaks because I thought it was bad for my social health to stay away from centralized spaces where all my friends were, but later discovered that keeping a site is incredibly good for my personal health.

Without a site, my creativity collapses inward. I draw layouts in my journal. I think about full site ideas, imagining places to put my thoughts, even if I don't build it. I wanted to share in ways that Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, Tumblr, and other places didn't support. Without an outlet, the ideas turn into an anxious backlog of things I haven't expressed.

I'm realizing: I'm probably going to be making websites for the rest of my life, or as long as I'm able. They will evolve, grow, change, get deleted, and return, but I don't think I'm interested in removing myself from this world again. If the internet becomes sludge, I'll make them on my laptop. Before we had the internet at home in the 90s, I used to put them on 3.5-inch floppy disks and mail them to my friends to pull up on their home computers. (Not sure I'll go that far, but it's an option.)

Maybe it's because I started making them in my formative years, but it's simply part of how I think. Making a website creates context for an idea, and I love for things to live in their proper context. What stopped me was that I got on social media, started using my phone more than my computer, and at a certain point it was impossible to work my phone into webcrafting workflows. Now, my phone is easily part of the workflow because I use it to send things to myself on desktop. I use apps that actually support creativity. Social media isn't part of any of this.

Websites Are A Gateway Drug to Writing

Having a website gives me a space to write and share writing. Even if no one reads it or cares, I get value and IMMENSE benefit from expressing ideas. Sometimes it feels like I can't think straight until I set pen to paper (or fingertip to key). Most social media prioritizes quick, simple thoughts and shares, without expanding or thinking, exploring and "waxing poetic" as I sometimes do. As a naturally verbose person, I never quite fit into the social media sharing culture.

Everything I've had go "viral" has been a quick and clever quip that I barely thought about before posting, probably something I said on lack of sleep or meds. The attention gave me a much-needed hit of dopamine, mixed with external validation and a feeling of acceptance from a small community of people (thousands) who liked a thing I said. Then what? It ends.

Writing something - like this post - that I've thought about for a few months and finally sat down to articulate is much more rewarding. Even if I don't post it, it's more creative and personally rewarding than even the most solid tweet. Publishing online provides a unique layer that journaling privately could never compare to: I have to express my thoughts in a way that others can understand them. I don't always achieve the goal, but it's still a great way to learn and grow in communication.

In some ways, websites remind me I'm a real person who makes things, thinks things, and cares enough to share things. I can polish my perspective via feedback and comments from others. I'm often lost in my solitude, haunting my own life. This gives me a place to connect and say: here I am. It's a proof of my existence outside of my home. Maybe some people don't need to "prove" they exist, but since I spent over half my life not feeling real and wondering what it was that makes people "alive" vs simply "here," it's a welcome realization that websites create this feeling.

Publishing and sharing thoughts, engaging in the web community, learning from others, and exchanging ideas are a great way to combat my default sense of "nothingness," and feel real.

Webcrafting as a Practice

I opened this site at the end of 2023 after some offline tinkering. I'm not a daily-habits type of person, barely even weekly-habits, but I know if I don't touch a hobby for over a month, I forget it exists. I gently tap a website at least once a month - new post, reflection, art, some edits, a redesign, etc.

When I'm not actively making pages, I'm still thinking about them. It's like sex, in some ways. I get horny, I masturbate, I feel better. I have an idea, I make it, I feel better. If I ignore it, I can get overwhelmed with the "horny and sad" feeling.

I came back because I missed it; I felt creatively starved. I needed a place online that felt like mine, and that wasn't populated with annoying posts/ads that I couldn't stop myself from seeing. I like to have a handle on what I'm consuming. This comes off as "websites vs social media" which is not my intent in writing it, but it just so happens that in my narrative of expression, it was the failings of social media that made me appreciate webcrafting. One exposes me, the other comforts me. Social media is a performance. Websites are home.

The simple truth is that making websites and sharing my thoughts remind me of who I am. I am a person who likes things, who has thoughts and makes things. They are evidence of my quiet, weird, and expansive internal world that needs somewhere to spill out.