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Update: I used to hate Geocities pages, now I get it

Last week I was cleaning out an old hard drive and found a backup of my 1997 Geocities site. I cringed at first with all the tiled backgrounds and blinking gifs. But then I looked closer at the code, at the guestbook and the hand drawn pixel art I made in MS Paint. It hit me that this was the purest form of self expression online before everything became templates and ads. Has anyone else gone back and looked at their old personal sites?
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2 Comments
blair_davis50
Did you ever have one of those guestbooks where people would just post "Nice site!" and then link to their own completely unrelated page about their cat? lol. I miss how random and low-stakes it all was, no algorithms or engagement bait, just people showing off their weird little hobbies. It was the online equivalent of a zine you'd find at a record shop.
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the_wendy
the_wendy3d ago
Used to roll my eyes at those sites too but now I see how much heart went into them.
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