I can't be the only one who noticed this, but I haven't seen many people talk about this weird social mechanism. Remember how in the 90's and 2000's, everyone was obsessed with looking as skinny as possible, then people got tired of dieting, EDs and self esteem issues? And how all of the sudden a body positivity movement appeared overnight and tried overcorrecting for it by outright calling skinny and/or hourglass shaped bodies "unrealistic"? Yes, that's what I'm talking about. People take one thing to the extreme (in this case thinness) and then try to overcorrect it by another extreme. This does not only apply to beauty standards, but political movements as well. And overcorrecting goes hand in hand with reactionary politics, finding scapegoats to blame all of society's ills to and witch hunts.
One example of this is conservative men, who were self-proclaimed liberals for most of their lives, then turned conservative because a twitter influencer told them. They will go on and on about how (all) women are guilty of "ruining society by voting democrat", conveniently ignoring their past political beliefs, which led to the current situation they hate. Then their politics bleed over to the rest of the world and youngsters from central Europe then try to force American talking points into central European context and they make zero sense. It's ironic that these same nimrods then accuse me of being "easily manipulated", because I'm not buying the latest grifter talking point.
The problem is that nearly all "overcorrection" people tend to argue in bad faith, misinterpret everything you have to say, just to push an agenda. They change their political alignment every 5 years or so, according to what's the latest fad, so they can look based or whatever. There's not much depth to what they believe (even if they try to convince you otherwise), it's just that sometimes they happen to say something intelligent and even then, they're probably parroting it from someone else. If their politics start accumulating more backlash, they delete all their digital footprint and adopt something else, something more socially acceptable and start acting like they never bought into their previous politics. And blame others for doing the things they were doing.
No, I don't mean blogging about New Age stuff. I guess era would be more appropriate, but alas. I've noticed blogger is mostly death. In it's peak I was creating Stardoll blogs and getting involved in all the drama, but I don't see much of that anymore. A lot of twitter personalities use Substack, which seems more like a watered down version of blogger with less customization. Substack also hits you with a subscription window for the said author, or some articles are locked behind a paywall. Listen, I know blogger could be monetized as well, but I will never get why a random article has to be paid for.
I was thinking about certain types of girls and women, who very much care about aesthetics, yet use substack. Why not use something that let's you be more creative? But again, these websites and services tend to get coded as either "right wing" or "left wing", so someone who presents herself as a RW e-girl might prefer substack, just for the sake of it. Blogger was always my go to for blogging, until I discovered NeoCities. The thing that made me stop using blogger was the inability to code outside of a template, and when I was searching for more y2k/gal/mcbling themed ones I found nothing. So NeoCities was the best option for me in this regard. The visual aspect is important to me, not to mention I don't have to stick to one template. My home page is more gal themed and ultra feminine, while blogging page has calmer colors and less distracting elements, making a better reading experience. My diary page has an air of intimacy, indicated by the lace. I've learned something about myself from this: I absolutely hate being constricted to one theme or aesthetic. While the ultra feminine look of my homepage is peak me, I also have diferent aspects than just that.
While I'm not aware if there's any research on this topic, I think everyone having the same website layout may result in everyone's opinions and preferences ending up uniform. This is especially true when most people fear looking "tacky" or "kitschy", so they stick to looking and acting basic. I'm not trying to attack anyone by saying this, but the recent popularity of clean girl and old money aesthetics are a symptom of this.People keep telling me it's "form follows function", but let's not delude ourselves. The sterile and overly clean look of the modern internet makes people adopt a certain type of personality, something straight out of LinkedIn. If you think this lack of personality doesn't affect you, you'd be wrong.
It also seems like fashion bloggers are a thing of the past. I can't name any popular fashion bloggers right now, and those that used to be popular now only post on instagram and tiktok. Kinda strange considering there are a lot of self proclaimed fashion girlies on twitter. But for some reason they only repost runway photos. Pity, I would like to hear about their thoughts on certain brands and collections.
I have to ask myself: was this destruction of old school blogging deliberate? The system destroys something and then presents a convenient solution to it, which mainly benefits the system. Both fashion and blogging have slowly become more stale and boring over the years, but fashion is a topic for me to dissect in another article.
There has to be something beyond. I'm not thinking afterlife or anything like that when I say this. Do people honestly believe this is it? That there's nothing else to this world besides the mundanity we experience every single day? Or better: how can we be sure anything of this is real? I post on a very small forum (about 20 active users), where we discuss mysteries and the paranormal. One of the most discussed topics is exactly this. If what we see is real. It's not as "schizo" as you may think. It's a form of escapism and more importantly, a way too keep your sanity during these times. It's comforting to think that one day you'll wake up and be back home. Or thinking of ways to go back and forget about this experience we're having. That's the actual wildness out there. You can sometimes stumble across relics from the "old world" - maybe AI art could be a way the old reality is leaking through? Who knows. But from what I've gathered, the old world is not very similar to this one. For example, the architecture might be different, certain brands might belong to different owners, history might have changed. Some people might not actually exist, but others might. It's a weird thing to think about, I admit.
It first started with time resets - the idea that CERN or whoever will reset time back to the start of the pandemic. Some people weren't satisfied with a simple time reset, so they made up a theory that our souls diverted from the original timeline somehow. Who knows if it's true or not, or what might actually be the mechanics behind it, sounds interesting enought so let's think about it. The reason I used 'kwangya' in the title is because I like to listen to aespa's songs while reading more about this theory. I'd also like to think their style is more mainstream back in the OG timeline but alas. That's just my wishful thinking.
(I should really make a remote viewing diary, because I'm not sure if this type of content fits the blog section.)
I was browsing few unnamed forums and websites and found threads about personal websites, especially those on NeoCities. I've seen users dumping on certain websites for just looking pretty and not offering anything else. But what do they expect from personal websites which are often managed by teenagers and college students? Life advice? These critics are always in a thrill seeking mode i.e. deliberately searching for websites they deem "interesting" and discarding everything else. I guess by "interesting" they mean sites that don't look aesthetically pleasing, but offer some type of content the user wants to see. More often than not it's something incredibly niche, which doesn't appeal to a younger audience, which is most of NeoCities.
It's plain old dopamine chasing disguised as something more sophisticated. You can see this in travel vloggers, when they claim a destination sucks, because it's not something akin to an adult Disneyland. People can't appreciate things for the sake of it. There always has to be some type of a gimmick for something to be worth it. I can't understand why the same people who cry about the death of personal web are then upset when a small website isn't managed in the same way a large corporate one is. Yeah, no 💩 an html website isn't gonna give the same dopamine hit as twitter. No one should change their personality or style just for the sake of pandering to the lowest common denominator. That's how we got social media and people still hate it.
Some users complain that NeoCities hosts "pointless" sites, that allegedly offer nothing just nostalgia baiting and journal entries from "boring" people or normies. The normie bit is especially comical to me, because most people who complain about normies are just glorified normies themselves and lose it whenever someone has an opinion other than whatever is pre-approved by the establishment. Creating a wacky website and complaining like an angsty teen over someone else's website doesn't magically un-normie you.
People don't make personal websites to entertain a myriad of pretentious wankers who want to pat themselves on the back over how "intelectual" or "sophisticated" they are, for allegedly taking interest in every niche topic under the Sun. Yeah sure I totally believe a CompSci graduate, who is mainly into gaming or fandoms or whatever, is very interested in my thoughts on Paracelsus. They want the oddities but without the "unpalatable" elements. No one is really interested in things that aren't seen as status symbols in a way. Of course they want to learn pointless (for them) trivia about your hobby, so they can repeat it to someone else and act all smart about it. You see this behavior mainly on sites like reddit, where they sometimes repeat downright disinfo, just because it sounded intelligent enough to them. So no matter how "interesting" you are according to their definition, you still have to dumb yourself down or censor yourself to appease them. I'm saying this from personal experience, they don't like it when you say stuff like astrology was akin to math back then (hence why all cultures have it), because they associate astrology with horoscopes and tiktok "witches".
Point is that people want to seem like they're very interested in whatever you're saying, but most of the time it's performative. Sorry, but I have a hard time believing their interest is genuine. Not to mention if you somehow deviate from the general consensus on whatever topic, they make their job to police and censor you for not repeating whatever is on wikipedia.