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Comment by alelos | Hacker News Reader

Try the 'small web', I'm enjoying gemini, https://gemini.circumlunar.space/

Here's the thing: gopher & gemini are, in a sense, like Facebook: extremely uniform. In that sense, they are not even BBSes, because it's practically impossible to convey self expression beyond text. Don't get me wrong: one can easily get lost in gopherholes with 20+ years of content, but it's always only content.

In contrast the web of the early 2000s was awesome, because you already could do a lot of really weird things (bouncing mouse trailing balls, anyone?) resulting in self-expressing art-like sites - the pinnacle of these kind of sites were undoubtedly the Flash era.

So yes, depends on what one is after. Maybe both are needed.

The bouncing mouse balls, flash animations, pixel dollz, and spinning flame skulls of the 2000s were mostly copied off other sites. So sure, that’s self-expression, but only in the same sense that decorating your bedroom with posters is self-expression. When it’s just text, EVERYTHING on the site is your own words. It’s all from the author. I think that’s a more ‘pure’ self-expression.

If you like the geocities style more, then you can use neocities.

Do you invent the particular words you use for self-expression? Or do you use words people know, hence copying these words?

You need common ground to make it relatable, copying stuff is inevitable.

Graphics or audio needs some sort of talent and ever-so-tiny amount of skills with some editing program to make it work. Text needs merely a QWERTY (or touchscreen) keyboard, and the ability to compose text in the natural language of your choice (which most are able to do by the age of 10, barring low-literacy areas). In that sense, text is much cheaper to use for self-expression, even though necessarily limited. On the other hand, Gemini/Gopher is near-symbiotic with BBS and IRC-based communities, which are a decent text-based interactive media that could be useful for self-expression in the hands of the right people.

I agree that multimedia-based networked self-expression is limited these days, but maybe something else will spark a Gemini-like comback for multimedia in the future.

> Text needs merely a QWERTY (or touchscreen) keyboard, and the ability to compose text in the natural language of your choice

Writing is a lot more harder, than, for example, drawing. You said it yourself: "by the age of 10" compared to drawing, basically since someone can hold a crayon.

My unstated assumption was that whatever self-expression you put out there, would be at least possible to appreciate by an audience of adult humans.

I understand and believe that children should be allowed to self-express, but quite frankly, nobody is interested in hearing what the child has to say because it's mostly awkward in execution and repetitive. The relatives and perhaps people who work with children professionally will care, but the general public won't unless it's particularly funny, poignant, or whatever.

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