meejle

I’d love it if you did that! Thanks!

I think it’ll happen, but I don’t think it’s happening yet.

The unease is already there (“the internet used to be a place”/“why isn’t the internet fun any more?” sentiments and #OldWeb #SlowWeb hashtags), but I don’t think people are ready to do anything about it.

I’m only one guy, with a small internet following, but I recently had a go at launching a small “Gaymers” webring (well, a simplified version of one). I promoted it on my socials, I laid out why I think it’s a good idea, I paid to “Blaze” it on Tumblr – I even emailed some like-minded creators directly.

I rewrote the webpage multiple times, to try to make it more persuasive and more concise. I added a contact form in case people felt uncomfortable emailing me. I loosened the rules to allow commercial websites, as long as they were still independent. I worked hard on the widget and incorporated feedback (made it respect prefers-reduced-motion and made a static version for sites where animation would feel out of place).

I got some good feedback; lots of people said it was interesting, and a good idea. But literally no one joined or expressed any interest in joining. 🤷‍♂️

I’m going to have one more go at promoting it next time I’ve got money to spare, but I’ll most likely end up quietly deleting it along with any evidence it existed, because a webring of one is fucking embarrassing. 💀

I guess if you build it, they will not necessarily come lmao

They know they already have a Bing logo they could use, right? 🤔

Not that this is out of character for Microsoft. Office became Office 365, which became Microsoft 365… unless you search for it online, because then all three names show up.

Likewise, Bing Chat became Copilot… but then the main Office launcher became Microsoft 365 Copilot, so there are two Copilot apps on people’s PCs and it’s not immediately clear what the difference is. (This joins the two OneNote apps and two Outlook apps.)

And, they finally finished retiring the MSN brand and changed everything over to “Microsoft Start” (not to be confused with the iconic “Start” button 😬)… only to make a new MSN logo and change it all back.

Meanwhile, there’s a Bing app for Android that has an almost identical feature set to Edge, but different branding and a different UI. There’s also an MSN app, which… has almost an identical feature set as the other two apps, but a slightly different UI to the Bing app. 😭

I’ve been thinking a lot about webrings lately. Now that Google is basically cutting off traffic from the indie web.

I feel like everyone’s kinda having the same idea at the same time, which gives me some hope, but… it’s difficult enough to find a ring to join, that I think most people will give up?

I don’t know what I think the solution is. Centralising it and having a big, user-friendly “webring platform” is just inviting more enshittification. But the handful of webring directories I’ve found are really lacking.

Does anyone have any suggestions? Or, does anyone want to team up and make, like, a Gaymers Webring? (That’s pretty much what I’m looking for.)

ETA: I’ve built one. DM me if you’re interested!

This is probably a bit “I’m 14 and this is deep”, but I was thinking the other day about how “pull down to refresh” is weirdly similar to pulling a slot machine handle. 😬

I don’t think that was ever part of its design (didn’t the Tweetie dev invent it?), but still.

Why would anyone opt in 😭

Is this just so they can wait a few months and say, “Not enough people were discovering this Great Feature, so we’re enabling it by default”?

I’ve already been getting the itch to leave Samsung and try something different. I’m keeping my eye on the upcoming Nothing Phone 3, if it’s genuinely a “flagship” for £800 I might jump ship.

Drink once if they ban face coverings because of this.

Drink twice if they somehow link it to hijabs and burqas in a skewed bid to “win back Reform voters”.

Down your drink if they fuck up and do it around the time of the next pandemic.

Grok wouldn’t fuck up the spelling so badly