Why use Neocities?

There's a lot of reasons.

Why not use a more professional host? Why use such an outdated style of a webpage?

Because this age of web design is important to me.

I grew up alongside the internet in the 2000s. I'd started using it around 2005-2006, my memory's a little hazy, but it was around that time. I saw personal websites like this just as they were beginning to die out, I witnessed them evolve into the, at the time, more modern designs, but these more simple websites, well, they felt more real, more personal.

As I grew up so did the internet, and it became something I hated. It was advertisements, corporations, it became hard to find anyone's personal website, or even host your own, it sucked, and it still sucks, probably even more now than it ever did.

I can appreciate the new technology, such as the advancements in HTML and CSS, but overall, the internet just became worse, it no longer felt like people were running the internet, it felt more like corporations and advertisements were. It became "cringe" to just be yourself, and in some cases, you could even outright be shunned for it.

After a few years of just dealing with the new web, I found out about Mastodon, which felt like how social media should have always been. Soon after, I discovered the yesterweb through Neocities.

Ever since then, I've been exclusively using Mastodon as my only social media, and have been keeping this website up on Neocities as my personal site and introduction for myself when meeting new people.

If you're reading this and you have the same appreciation for the yesterweb as I do, please go check out yesterweb.org! I think you'd like it a lot if you have this same appreciation for the old web as I do. I also encourage you to browse Neocities's website directory, you'll find lots of awesome websites with similar mindsets in their design!