A small web July

I run the Bear Blog platform. The discover feed on Bear has become a social hub and community space for many. There’s something quite charming about slower interconnectivity via RSS, email, and replying via posts.

It’s well worth checking out: https://bearblog.dev/discover/

I like the idea of some sort of gated "small web". I know this would be an inevitable rabbit hole of meta trying to define it, but simple sites, built by humans directly, authentic sites. ...

A google search for that would be fun.

We are sick of the current digital world. There is a trend of people writing about it.

By viewing it from different angles and reflecting on it in their very own ways, people are organically finding ways to heal from the dopamine trap, by escaping from the endless scroll cage, canned algorithms, and fast-food short videos."

Here is my favorite new "small web" thing: An autoscroller of ANSI art from the 90s onwards at https://16colo.rs/es3.php

Once I got out of the house and starting doing stuff all of this sort of came naturally to me. The only "big web" I use is Instagram, and I don't regret my time spent there because most of it is engaging with my friends anyways.

I made a Hacker News UI that allows you to filter for only the small-web stories on the frontpage. It uses Kagi's list of small-web sites[0]. It's been a great way to discover new, timely content and a lot more manageable than an unfiltered RSS firehose.

Here's small web Hacker News: https://hcker.news/?smallweb=true

[0] curated at: https://github.com/kagisearch/smallweb/blob/main/smallweb.tx...

SaaS companies pay me to write documentation and blogs (hopefully that aren't too corporate!). So I can't join you as much as I'd like. But coincidentally, I did delete web browsers from my phone last night. I've tried a bunch of other digital wellbeing stuff but it never really sticks. Came to the conclusion that it's because nothing blocks just surfing the web, which is where I waste the most time. Now, if someone messages me an interesting URL, or I think of something to Google, I just add it to Notion and check when I'm on desktop. More power to small web July, though!

I started doing most of this in 2017. Perhaps I am just unusually sensitive to social media, but I discovered that whenever I used Facebook I just ended up angry or depressed. I deleted my accounts and expected about a week of FOMO. There was zero FOMO and I basically don’t think about social media anymore. It’s been all RSS and NPR on an actual radio for many years. I 100% do not miss it because by the end very few of the interactions I was having were worth my time.

EXCEPT: I post on HN and some other tech sites occasionally. I do enjoy tech topics and it’s pretty easy to steer clear of topics that don’t interest me (eg, cryptocurrency). I also text frequently with a network of friend-nerds about tech news. Is texting social media?

Admittedly I have a weak spot for YouTube. Their algorithm consistently gives me stuff I love: woodworking videos, gardening videos, science and math videos, and a lot of music I don’t think I would be otherwise exposed to. I basically never read YT comments because most are incredibly low value. So it does not really feel like social media to me.

Beyond that, I spend a lot of time outside. Sometimes with friends, sometimes alone. I went through a phase of work that was grueling and dealt with family health issues at the same time. Being able to get into the woods for a trail run on most mornings usually gave me the calmness and patience I needed to get through a lot of long days.

I am looking forward to trying the Kagi lens people posted about here. I added the “enshittification” Kagi blocklist people mentioned a few days ago and it made a good search experience even better.

I see RSS and am reminded that Google/Chrome killed RSS, they took over and to this day chrome has no native RSS support. That RSS link opens like plain XML text file in Chrome. It wasn't like this with major browsers (except IE) when chrome appeared.

This is nice. A few thoughts:

It's sad to know that sobriety groups use addictive tech for check-ins.

> Replace scrolling with building - building out my RSS reader, my website, my personal link connections, my skills in using a static site generator, etc.

I've personally found that this approach is just not enough. Sure, I might be "building" something with distracting stuff just a click away, all the while I'm still sitting, staring at a screen, and, fundamentally, in denial that life is possible without the Web.

Took me a couple of years to come to this realization, I went through the whole schtick of getting off doomscroll portals by deleting accounts and using alternative frontends, using addons on my browser to limit and then block those sites, using screentime limits, removing apps, reducing colors on my phone, getting into static websites, web publishing, audio editing, etc. – all of this effort to end up here, commenting on a VC-backed forum during my working hours, because it requires me to sit in front of a screen.

It's like strapping yourself into the chair from A Clockwork Orange (and managing/maintaining each strap) just to pretend that, for many of us, this tech is not a clear net negative, and that those negatives don't come from all sides, i.e., it's not just particular apps or sites we use, it's the tech itself that makes us stationary, distracted, obsessed, overstimulated, etc.

There's something fundamentally wrong if I'm picking up my distraction device because of a "touch grass" notification, much like trying to fix radiation poisoning by trying a different isotope.

Then again, those that make a more radical shift and get off the web don't waste time publishing blog posts about their framework to get off the web. Of, for that matter, comment on said posts...

I love that your website loads only a single html file. Feels somehow refreshing.

How about small web all year?

"small web" often feels like sorting through magazines at the doctor's office. Random, low quality, and outdated. I think going for "small community" can work well. Either people you're close with in real life, or people that you share an interest with.