This is exactly what I've been after with my side projects. Thanks for the encouragement to continue even when things are slow-going, makes me remember it's a feature not a bug.
But there’s also something else. As mentioned in another post I maintain a list of weird links you can browse at random if you want to do some browsing https://theforest.link/
I try to include sites that are “different” and I also try to avoid having too much dev oriented content. But I warn you that you might stumble on some weird content.
Out of 6 random tries, all were dev oriented and none were what I would consider weird. 3 out of the 6 were websitehowto.com and the other 3 were developer blogs. Perhaps it was just poor luck, but I don't see how websitehowto.com, a "5-page guide to start a Wordpress website", really fits.
I just run the experiment and out of 6 clicks I got:
- a site no longer online - a personal blog on neocities - another blog on blogspot - a dev oriented personal site - another neocities website - a site dedicated to home networks
Again, unfortunately most indie web is also tech web, there’s no way around it.
Whether or not it's open source (and whether or not it's OpenAI doing it) doesn't affect the problems I have with it.
You have time to actually interact with other people, you can engage with them at a more personal level.
I have slow email interactions that have moved from emails to actual mails where messages take weeks to arrive and it’s glorious.
It’s also an extremely kind environment, at least it is for me. It’s the entire opposite of most social media.