Why Neocities?

   Neocities, because it's like Geocities. Because everybody starts with a blank page and must choose what to present and how to present it. Because there is no conformity, no set profiles. Because its full of creative people sharing their genuine interests. It's not riddled with advertisements posing as scientific studies or reviews. There are no bot accounts posing as people, or corporations posing as people. Because it's not a walled garden, an echo-chamber. It's not a dead social media app which people use mainly as a photo album, event calander and address book.

    I'm four decades on this Earth. I listened to vinyl records and recorded music on magnetic tape cassettes from the radio. I owned a Filo-Fax. I collected actual stickers. My first computer was a brand new 80s/90s Amstrad. Picture Floppy Disks, a heavy glass screen, beige plastic and green text on a so-called "black" background. It came with a big book of mysterious gamecode. I was probably only ten years old when I spent hours every day typing out one chapter called "Pong". When I finally completed it I ran the program but nothing happened. I re-read the code, checking my transcript symbol by symbol, over and over again. Once I finally weeded out most of the mistakes, I had a functional game of Pong, albeit one paddle was invisible. I never could figure out why. But in the process of trying, I developed a small understanding of the language. I experimented with changing symbols to figure out what changes it caused.

    I bought my first CD in 1995. I used a rotary-dial telephone to make calls on the landline, when my new Windows PC wasn't using it to access the internet. I discovered random websites and text-based chatrooms. I waited patiently for 5 minutes after clicking a link, watching photos load pixels line after line. I built a Geocities page called mrmuckymutt and loaded it with so much Halloween Flash my computer would crash when I visited it. I customised my MySpace layouts and Bebo skins in the 00s. I ripped CDs. I downloaded media via Napster, torrents via Limewire, and was sorry to see my local record shop close down. I dressed like a lunatic, with punk, goth, clown influences. I wore piercings, facepaint, multicolour dreadlocks, mohawks, hair extensions and skinhead. I'm grateful social-media wasn't a big thing when I was young, so my cringe wasn't tagged and tracked and immortalised.

    I'm grateful for Neocities. Here I can host a shrine of my current and future cringe. Here I can experiment with the aspect of computers that I loved way back when. Before Windows and Facebook. Simple and uninterrupted free expression.