When the Internet became widely available in the late ’90s / early 2000s, it was very much a Wild West of hugely differing sites. From something as simple as a single article about film cameras, to an entire horror story in the form of one spelunker’s online caving journal, surfing the web in the internet’s infancy would find you face-to-face with a creative melting-pot of websites.
So why is it all looking a bit bland now, and how can we rediscover the heart of the Internet?
Creative ’90s
To answer our question, we need to go back three decades, when the internet was just picking up steam. It’s 1995. Amazon (originally named Cadabra) was founded just months ago, and the website is clunky at best, as is the case with most websites at this point. There are no WordPress plugins to neatly integrate all functions of your site, and the Internet is slow, accessed through a dial-up modem. Most people don’t even own computers yet, much less know how to hook one up to the World Wide Web. As a result, e-commerce won’t pick up for quite some time. For one, it’s not really convenient; connecting to the internet takes time, and shopping sites that today we take for granted are few and far between. Questions surrounding trustworthiness also give potential online shoppers pause. Ebay, known as Auction Web, is just getting started and doesn’t have the luxury of PayPal, never mind any kind of buyer protection. Courageous buyers send money or cheques via mail and hope that the seller is honest enough to send them their items. Scams run rampant, and naturally, many are hesitant to tap their personal details into a machine to buy a pizza when they could order one safely over the phone instead. At this point, traditional purchasing methods are far safer and more practical.
These are just some of the obstacles that prevented e-commerce sites from dominating in this era, which in turn allowed small, independent pet projects, blogs and experiments to flourish on the growing online space. Free of the chokehold that shopping sites currently have on the web, creative minds were free to populate their little corner of the internet with anything their imagination could summon — within the confines of the limited technology of the day.
Enter the Naughties
However, this would all change rapidly with the onset of safer and more efficient ways to pay online, better protection for online shoppers, and a slew of other 21st-century developments. The first Cyber Monday in 2005 only served to encourage online sales, popularising shopping from the comfort of your home or the workplace and paving the way for the modern e-commerce environment — but at what cost?
Nowadays, it’s much harder to find unique, interesting websites that exist for fun instead of profit. Some sites, such as The Useless Web, will redirect you to a series of randomised, quirky sites that serve no practical use except to entertain you for a little while. Unfortunately, finding more of these sites is tough. Type just about any term into a search engine, and your top result will typically be from an online shop of some shape or form.
But is there a way to combat this rampant consumerism and help return the internet to that adolescent stage of existence when opportunities for creativity abounded? Sadly, this is now almost impossible. The rise of ‘AI slop,’ the undeniable dominance of hyper-consumerism and the popularity of drag-and-drop website formats have changed the online environment. But this doesn’t mean we can’t make it a little better. The more skilled amongst us have the means to bring back the magic that made the internet a place of wonder and excitement.
Creativity for Creativity’s Sake
Developers and coders in general have a vast stock of knowledge that allows them to be creative in infinite ways. Their canvas is digital, and that means unlimited possibilities to get inventive. Those who can manipulate lines of code are in a position to build ambitious websites that are not confined by pre-built templates. In other words, they’re free to think outside the box.
I would encourage anyone with enough spare time, resources and the know-how to build an entirely useless website, one that serves no purpose at all except to give the viewer a giggle. Think This Is Not A Jump Scare or Patatap. Bring your most random, preposterous and humorous ideas to life, and publish them for others to enjoy. Set up a Buy Me A Coffee page to support hosting fees if necessary. Maybe your website won’t become particularly popular, and perhaps you won’t be able to afford to keep it up for long. That’s okay. What’s important is that you’ve contributed to the soul of the internet. You are fighting, in a small way, against the automation and zombification of a space that was once deeply human at its core. The action of taking the time to express yourself through this medium and release your project into the wild is what the internet was always meant for: exchanging ideas. And while e-commerce has its place, it shouldn’t drown out brilliant independent projects that can entertain and inspire.
If you can, go out and build something pointless. The most unnecessary websites may, in the end, be the ones that preserve the heart of the internet and bring back the joy.
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