Throwback Something

As the WordPress environment is set aflame by one guy throwing a tantrum and lawyers sending each other strongly worded leaflets, I'm just sitting here glad that I made the switch to ClassicPress months ago. And, not for the first time, I noticed a trend in my social media restructuring: when it isn't FOSS or decentalised, the sites I'm now most active on is a fork or reconstruction of what I grew up with.

• ClassicPress: WordPress
• DreamWidth: LiveJournal
• NekoWeb: a service similar to GeoCities
• SpaceHey: MySpace

While NekoWeb is admittedly a stretch (free hosting never went out of style), I have listed it because of how nostalgic it has made me. It's what I keep repeating: the Old Web and how people used to build and decorate their online spaces. However, two services are forked from earlier concepts of their modern-day counterparts:

• 2018: WordPress 5.0 introduced the Block system
• Dreamwidth forked from LJ as early as 2009

And SpaceHey is basically resurrected MySpace from the early 2000s or so... I was never on that platform proper pre-botched migration (it got better). It's been interesting to see how it was, right now... and not as a kid, but an adult that does their own taxes and everything. I would've loved MySpace, especially for the hack to inject CSS. And I'm liking it now as an alternative to Facebook.