Whatever Happened to Profile Customization?

[@joebot86]

I just miss the Internet being a far more diverse (in website terms) place, everything being 5 websites that try to look like each other is sad.

[@takemybloon1210]

Every app is trying to be tiktok 💀

[@SageArdor]

I would gladly take more shock sites if it meant the internet had more personality again.

[@Kalitayy]

I design website for some clients. The reason why we make website similar to one another is because of the thing called Jakob's Law. Basically, users would prefer a website to work the same way as other website they're familiar with. Which is why you put search bars on top, hamburger bar opens up a menu, etc. But again, this is all to make more profit so yeah. Soulless. Don't become a designer, be an artist. Designers were supposed to be enemy of artists before AI came in. Now it's too late. Everything is minimalistic, low-effort, and soulless.

[@htsunmiku]

And now they want ai assistants to be the one to go to place for all information 😭

[@Josuh]

Y'all BitView is right there

[@TheLexikitty]

The internet is so boring now sometimes, it’s like having a designer standing over you being like “now we can’t have TOO much fun”

[@cerulity32k]

I've resorted to making my own website so I can express myself as much as possible. I actually have two; one is an actual portfolio for professional use that has more tasteful design choices (while still keeping a good amount of color and expression), and the other, more personal one, is bright pink, CSSed to death, and gay as hell. I just wish I could "embed" that gayness everywhere else lol.

[@GavinFromWeb]

omg hi lexi!

[@fila1445]

That feeling when you put so much s*** to your MySpace page it takes 10 minutes to load was magnificent 😊

[@Lolium-The-Atom]

Designers then: "lets add some stuff" Designers now: "lets delete some stuff"

[@HexOverride]

Ohmygod hi Lexi :3

[@JawbreakerJuice]

going on the internet used to feel like going on an adventure. now it feels like walking thru a hospital

[@deltaradiation]

woah you what are you doing here

[@THEnumber1riddlerkinnie]

REAL

[@Armintanzarian1]

I’m 37. So I’m old. I spent years on tumblr and MySpace etc. but I remember the even earlier internet. Saying 2002 pre Google etc. the true Wild West .

[@G-G._]

yeah this chick iss off her meds. look at her sick eyes and bags

[@toastedcherries]

youtube's loss of customization is something that will always make me sad =( now it really only extends to like... banners and thats rly it

[@saltedmutton7269]

woah its the roblox dude

[@Dat_Guy-IsCool]

How do you only have 8 likes?

[@lili2ngtag]

same

[@AwesomeYena]

Me too, Dude. Me too.

[@mimasweets]

I'm remember their header "You're a unique snowflake" when making the announcement.

[@rubygloomz]

Honestly, I think a major reason old heavily-customized profiles have declined in popularity is because most people now primarily use their phones to browse the web, not their PCs anymore. While a lot of people still use their desktop for their internet browsing, social media companies need to optimize the experience for all users, which unfortunately resulted in rather same-y profiles. Those heavily accessorized profiles often are very clunky and awkward to navigate on a mobile device. There's a reason why tumblr mobile opens up to the mini-profile, and not the fully decked out blog!

[@Kalitayy]

And sometimes phone internet in some countries are slower than Wi-Fi, which makes website slower and take longer to load

[@rubygloomz]

@@Kalitayy this too! so much to consider.

[@doompoison2365]

So, it's about efficiency and convenience, the need to cater to as wide as an audience as possible in order for the service/product to maximize revenue.

[@Kittygrl513]

I agree! I took a web development class and they also explained this as an accessibility issue as bright clashing colors do inpact readability and screen readers may have trouble reading more eccentric fonts

[@seigeengine]

Honestly, smartphones have been the bane of the internet. They're just not suited to general internet usage. Their format fundamentally is only suited to hyper-simplistic designs and limited experiences.

[@seagullsnest]

I immediately thought of discord but... You have to be rich af to customise your profile, and it doesn't even look that good...

[@PastaZ0neAct1]

You can do more customization if you're willing to do some client side stuff. Not everyone can see it, but people who have the same plugin can see it so it's something ig.

[@bubbadoo10]

@@PastaZ0neAct1 I just wish Discord would stop breaking Better Discord once a week, with the occasional fun ones every couple months or so where it breaks so badly and everyone has to rewrite everything

[@jootersblaccat]

@@bubbadoo10 Yeah, I stopped using better discord because of that. I enjoyed using it, but it just breaks literally all the time

[@bubbadoo10]

@@jootersblaccat Ye, the minor ones where it's just a quick reinstall nbd even if it's like a weekly issue at least It sucks, but I don't think there is anything they can do, when Discord changes all their shit like they seem to like to do

[@FuzBrain]

If you want to learn html, there's neocities at least

[@Nino_Psiquico]

I miss the option to add music to your profile. I was so obssesed with that. After I decided on the song that will be on my profile, I enter my profile and read through the "About Me" section, looked at my friends and images while the music was playing, and thinking I was someone else checking on my profile, hahaha. I bet I was not the only one.

[@fexarii]

I miss it sm :[ I get that in some cases it poses a copyright issue but it isn't like modern Spotify embeds aren't a thing! Or just compose your own music, I've seen two websites that are still up do that, it was very cool! Something about your own website having its own theme song just hits different, it makes it feel more immersive, like those cool audio visual rooms in museums. My dumb little carrd feels so empty without bg music

[@akissweatyballs]

Instagram recently added this feature and i was so happy about it lol

[@kwaddell]

2007 mood 🥲

[@BlaireBlaireBlaire]

instagram finally has that back, hopefully give it another 10 years and they might give us more customisation

[@Acorn905]

I wasnt around when that was popular but i wish that was still a thing! I could put whatever song im fixated onto at the moment in the description and tell people about it. I can still do that but i feel like people would say "Who asked?" Or assume im trying to be cockyjust cus i wanna talk about the things i like TwT

[@Badusername2000]

something i loved about the old youtube channel layout was that you could watch videos on the channel itself, without having to go to a separate video page

[@sunsetman22]

you could also search for videos inside of the channel as well

[@Badusername2000]

@@sunsetman22 you can still do that

[@Pherioxus]

Or that you could leave messages on their community section, or PM them, I did that so many times with people at the time.

[@neofluxmachina]

​@@Badusername2000 not on the mobile app :( or at least I don't know how

[@daneesia]

​​@@Pherioxus Yesss, the PM feature was actually nice 🥺 Edit: And I loved the channel comments too!

[@darthcupcake2]

I'm a veteran Tumblrina with a Neocities as well, and while making a Neocities felt sooooo freeing, it's frustrating how Tumblr has gone down the toilet in terms of customization (and yknow, everything else, something something car explosion hammers please). Obviously part of it is the actual UI changes implemented in recent years, but also... I feel like the culture of customization as far as users themselves go has kinda vanished. You mentioned a lot of people left after the "adult content" ban, and I think a lot of theme makers and such left with them. I remember being shocked when I made a new sideblog recently and went to look at themes from some of my favorite theme creators by clicking on the credit link on my other blogs, and half of them were just... dead links. Man :(

[@Wilker_uwu]

worse than this, i am an user who likes to read the reblogs and comments on other people's posts, and too often i find myself going to the /blog address because i can't seem to access anything written by people on that otherwise, so i often end up just staying in the newer page without the customization to access it.

[@anacecherry]

@@Wilker_uwu I hate the /blog address so much I still remember how angry I was when they introduced it

[@citrus_sweet]

I didn't even leave because of the nsfw ban, I left because of how bad the ads were once Yahoo bought the company, not in quantity, but I stayed on the science side of tumblr and when I'm suddenly being mass recommended promoted posts about some teenage romance filling my feed in-between entomology and climatology posts, I knew I had to leave because bruh

[@pckyart]

same, i moved to neocities a while back and hosted my KZbin on there, people really do enjoy going down the rabbit hole and love using neocities, I've met a lot of cool people since I started and everyone's passionate and kind about having fun learning to code.

[@GoodGirlPeruru]

"queer person talks too much about 2000-2005 websites" is my favorite subgenre of youtube video :)

[@hcbs1986]

Same community would be bullied off websites in the early 2000s

[@TheRenegade...]

​@@hcbs1986Not necessarily. There have been safe corners on the internet for queer people since the Usenet days

[@R.EDACED6]

@@hcbs1986 ah the irony, still miss those days...

[@Acorn905]

I know i love it!

[@elokin300]

@@hcbs1986 not really, it depends on the site

[@ph5.484]

i'm so glad you mentioned 3ds customisation, i really love the options that are out there for that now. the switch really dropped the ball on that

[@senritsujumpsuit6021]

Wii U also had music for everything the fact it had so many Eshop themes was wonderful that along with Miiverse made everything feel like a community but now every game is much more hallow

[@E7XEE]

The fact we can’t even create a pfp on the switch from assets from different games drives me insane, LET ME COMBINE MY MARIO AND SPLATOON ICONS

[@Aokiyoa]

Also, 360 and PS3 had these type of customizations as well and they were pretty awesome.

[@Oh_Nanners]

I'm really happy, at almost 40, to see there are still weird kids like I was, and still am, around. I thoroughly enjoy what you do Randy!

[@randomtinypotatocried]

I've been hitting a point lately where I miss the old more chaotic website themes, especially as an artist who feels so disappointing with the most bland website themes when making a website for my art portfolio. I took an art business course (portfolio website was the final) and most of the time was being told not put so many things that make me stand out as an artist. I ended up with a bland af portfolio site I won't feel comfortable with telling anyone about

[@skeletorpizza4595]

wdym ended up, ofc ui/ux courses will tell you to avoid standing out as much as possible so you can be taken more seriously by corpo. do your own chaotic thing, especially if its your art portfolio which is supposed to showcase who you are

[@Kalitayy]

As a UI/UX designer, I apologize to admit that this was probably caused by my kind. See, artists and designers, while extremely similar, are polar opposites. Artists are very maximalist-all about self-expression. While us designers, is all about getting the point across with as minimum effort as possible. E.g. we both utilize color theory, but artists use colors to represent their feelings/emotions while designers use colors to manipulate people into buying a product. When you think about it, it's a sickening occupation. Simplicity, minimalism and professionalism is the exact opposite of personalization and self-expression. Everything has to conform in order to appeal to the masses. This is why websites use flat design and modern fast food restaurant look bland and soulless. You hire an artist to create your logo and you might get the most expressive, intricate and complex piece of art. You hire a logo designer to create your logo and you might get a bland, soulless, oversimplified, overly glorified symbol/letter. Why did I became this you might ask? Simply put, I failed at art. It sucks that a lot of people who had passion in art who are not good enough to make a living through selling it have to become the corporate version of it in order to not starve. I know a couple of my friends who were great at painting and drawing, yet they had to settle with the career as a graphic/UI designer and create sanitized and soulless products based on what the management wants in order to survive. UI/UX or web designers are probably some of the most worthless individuals to ever exist. An artist can create a beautiful website, a develop can make it work. Just cut out the middleman. When you pay artists enough, we won't need designers.

[@randymoon]

i actually seriously considered becoming a ui/ux designer but this is one of the reasons why i ultimately decided against it. it's hard for me to force myself to do something when i have no creative freedom. i don't think anyone in this career should feel bad though! we all gotta do what we gotta do to put food on the table.

[@Melecie]

as a casual artist and someone interested in ui/ux design, i wish they're not mutually exclusive, and i feel they're probably not but latest trends just say they have to be modern ui is much like brutalist architecture imo: it does nothing but look mildly pleasing but more importantly get the job done. there's a priority towards being clear and concise because after all that's what most people are after. this honestly makes sense for most websites, including corporate websites since i feel they can consider any sort of color more than necessary would be immature and they want to maintain an air of professionalism; i can sort of see it in services or goods because it's not strictly necessary, but i still wish more social media allowed you to personalize your stuff more than just a custom bio of at most 180 characters, especially since we're far out of the age of personal websites and forums and in the age of centralized social media yes accessibility is a concern but like you do not need to give everyone full html control of their own pages, just ideally let people set custom colors, banners and backgrounds and layout their page how they want to even if still within the constraints of the software, and for accessibility just add a plain design mode as an optional setting personally while i do still like following ux rules i also tend to go wild on styling things when i both feel like i can, and when it's appropriate to, such as my personal neocities and my wikipedia userpage, and for everything else i try to take the limits of design as far as i could (such as discord bios) tl;dr modern ui design is the digital version of brutalism. there is a time and a place for them but not in social media oh and also more personal websites would be cool anyway, i wish we can bring back the geocities era

[@Kalitayy]

⁠@@Melecie"getting the job done" is literally what's been destroying art. Cutting corners in the name of efficiency had snowballed into AI art-putting the lowest amount of effort into something, as long as it "gets the job done" I still think that UI/UX design and design as a whole is a detriment to art. The only reason why I didn't resort to AI art, but instead graphic design, was simply because when I was 14, AI art didn't exist yet. It's basically the same thing, steal graphics from real talented artists, rearrange them a little bit, and boom you got something aesthetically-pleasing. If you wanna bastardize it even more, you have UI design, which takes no skill or talent. I consider my work as a UI designer as completely worthless outside of the corporate setting. At least programmers can code their own games or whatever. But UI designers? We depend on our clients and bosses to give us what they expect from a website. We're just a bunch technicians trained to operate a software like Figma because no one else wants to do it.

[@Kalitayy]

⁠@@randymoon if you can be an artist, you should always try to be an artist. I think it should be the default. Society has put too much value on tech, since UI design is a part of it. Anyone can learn how to operate Photoshop or Figma, but not everyone can make art. It takes no skill or talent to become what I am today, but someone who's learning art for 5-10 years may not be able to become an artist. That's what makes artists special. When you create something not because of yourself, but because of what a person wants you to, you're not creating art, you're creating a meaningless, worthless product

[@Kalitayy]

⁠@@randymoonI agree that we shouldn't feel bad about taking this career. But we designers should still feel ashamed because we only contribute more money to corporate entities, but nothing of value to the world.

[@ArtsyFoxo]

Y'all. Make your own websites. It's pretty much the solution to this problem we have to deal with. Get a neocities account and make yourself a blog or whatever the hell you want. Go online and find forums or literally create your own forum (you can LITERALLY DO THAT). There's this frustration that a lot of us feel due to losing their online freedom. And I feel like most people in a general sense, don't want to go and do the work needed to achieve it due to the convenience of social media sites. All it takes is a little effort, especially when there's so many free resources to learn from.

[@seigeengine]

The problem isn't that you can't do that. The problem is that there's no point in having a website if nobody is going to visit it, starting a forum if nobody is going to use it, etc. There are forums that still exist. Their last post was five years ago.

[@ArtsyFoxo]

@@seigeengine Gonna be honest, that's just an excuse. There are tons of blogs, portfolios, and other websites online that are currently running and active right now. Learning how to get people to visit is on you as an individual just like any other website. Hell the whole point of neocities is to be a social place where people can visit your site. People want to winge about how social media is toxic or people not being able to be free online/being at the whim of these services and businesses. Then when you actually got to do the work for it, people try to find a reason not to do it. Back in the day, people made websites just to create them and express themselves and they found ways to get people to find them if they desired that. Some of the sites were very well designed, some weren't, but the point was creating your own space in the infinite World of the internet. As for forums, though it is definitely a lesser used method of online social spaces. That doesn't mean that there aren't any that are currently running right now with their own communities chilling out. I found one literally a couple of days ago that is incredibly active and just very tight-knit. All depends on where you look.

[@seigeengine]

@@ArtsyFoxo No, it's the core fucking concern. Nobody goes to random neocities pages. It's a fundamental shift in how people interacted with the internet. Personal websites are basically relics. Nobody goes to them. You either put your content on the major platforms or nobody pays attention to you. A perfect example of this in action is how every webcomic used to have it's own website. Now they're all in the same couple of places. That wasn't because the creators got lazy, or it was cheaper. It's because people stopped going to those individual websites, and there was no inflow of new viewers because nobody goes to individual websites for webcomics anymore. You can posture about how that's your fault, but the reality is that the ecosystem has shifted, and if you want to go it on your own, you're fighting an uphill battle to just not completely fail, never mind achieve meaningful success. Even old services like geocities and myspace kind of demonstrate this. They were already demonstrating a drive towards centralization. Forums are a bit of a funky case, because they evolved rather than went away. What is Reddit, really, other than a variant of forum? Discord has forumish characteristics as well as being chat rooms. The traditional concept of a forum, however, is basically done. There are still niches where forums are used, but they're very much niches. Anyone trying to tell you that kind of forum isn't dead is conning you.

[@Josuh]

@@ArtsyFoxo that's just bitview

[@AuroraAce.]

what's the link to your website and/or forum?

[@Summer_Sauce]

I love how you intensely look at me through my screen

[@AquaTwist_]

For countries where people take pride in their individuality (especially the USA), I'm surprised the most popular social media tries to limit the amount of customization to their profiles nowadays. It's cool to see neocities having a cult following and hopefully we can get more websites like those in the future.

[@ColdBaltBlue]

America takes pride in the illusion of individuality, you’ll be cast out if you are actually unique. Same with Canada.

[@AquaTwist_]

@@ColdBaltBlue yes, though it depends on the context.

[@paintbrush3554]

America celebrates conforming selfishness not individualism.

[@liz_violet]

USA likes individuality if its the vibes you would get at a walmart or target, if its not what is in a luxury or outlet mall they don't want you.

[@seigeengine]

I'd argue the USA very much does not value individuality, and never has. The USA oscillates between periods of mass-conformism and mildly competitive conformism.

[@Bkoded]

in regards to the macbook statement, i feel like something that other brands missed when moving to more greyscale colors was the element of self expression apple embraced, with stickers etc on the back of macbooks and the glowing apple, even to this day apple still embrace stickers on their laptops iirc, whereas i dont think ive really seen a whole lot of encouragement in regards to that from other brands. A lot of companies seem way too caught up on this overly simple corporate look and its a shame that it has to pour into things that arent necessarily corporate in nature, social media doesnt need to look sleek and professional its there for you to express yourself

[@ersatz_]

I've been using spacehey as one of my main forms of social media for about 9 months now and while it definitely does have its own issues the amount of customization and creativity people show on it is incredibly refreshing! I've made lots of great friends on it and it feels like a lot of people my age (teens and young adults) are starting to get fed up with the simplistic and boring corporate nature of the modern internet.

[@hcbs1986]

Why not just don’t latch to social media at all or Atleast use something decent like cohost SpaceHey is an unmoderated mess, a PHP experiment kept up for too long The entire community which isn’t just raiders are tumblrinas It’s a bad website and the only reason people still use it is because it thrives off the name of MySpace which it barely resembles

[@covencockroach]

spacehey is pretty much only good for the customization lmao. the people there are fuckin demented

[@krims_kringle]

a lot of the people there are weird, i just block all the weird ones

[@meanncat3050]

@@covencockroach twitter is full of demented people too but you can't customize squat so that means it still sounds better. lol

[@jackiefox_143]

i just made an acc on there :D

[@macc188]

The reason the Internet Archive is so slow to load sometimes isn't the sheer amount of gifs/data on a page (these pages _did_ have to load in the dial-up days and storage was generally super limited), it's because they're archived on magnetic tapes that have to be retrieved and loaded from! A lil robot grabs the tape with the data for your particular request and loads all the data from the tape before putting it back :3

[@neoqwerty]

just had a hard flashback to the little videotron automated booth at the corner three blocks east of me with the robot arm pulling VHS tapes out for me from the library racks and giving it to me.

[@klovexthewolf]

oh my god i love them :D

[@hcbs1986]

Pretty sure they built a petabyte server just for the Internet archive, as shifty as it is I’m grateful IA even has that much shit

[@itspinebro]

I hope both sides of your pillow are cold and that you will eat the most delicious dish ever in the next few days

[@dealloc]

Not sure how you came to this information. Because it's absolutely false. The Internet Archive (and Wayback Machine) stores their in an archive format called "WARC", an extension to ARC created in 1980s. WARC was specified in 2008. They are sort of ZIP files but with extra information attached. These are used for both storing and serving. The Wayback Machine is essentialy a "WARC viewer", in the sense that the content is stored in these WARC files, and when you request the resources it will retrieve and _stream_ the data from the archive to your browser. The reason why it's slow comes down to a number of factors such as bandwidth, latency (including everything that happens inbetween you and the server), the priority of the request and "freshness" of the resources you're requesting. Magentic tapes may be used for long-term storage, compared to digital formats (like Hard drives, SATAs, CDs, DVDs, Blueray, etc.). But they have a big flaw; reading from them frequently will _degrade_ them, since they are mechanically spun in a tape drive. And they are not cheap either, nor can they store a lot of data for the size compared to digital formats. It would also require a lot of maintenance, which would end up costing a lot in the end! However, The Internet Archive does not confirm (nor deny) whether they have any data stored on magnetic tapes (or equivalents), or _what_ they have decided to store on those tapes-maybe some of it is in the Arctic World Archive, but I could not find any information on this.

[@blast_processing6577]

Yahoo! is still _somewhat_ popular in Japan, both as a search engine and an auction website, so I'd bet that's why Geocities didn't shut down there until 2019. With "dumb phones" making a comeback and search engines like Wiby growing in popularity, it would be neat if people made a conscious choice to make websites with fewer features -- no cookies, no social media -- for their interests and passions. Maybe old skool forums -- no likes, no upvoting/downvoting -- can make a bit of a comeback too, at the very least their slower pace would probably be better for everyone's sanity.

[@Fogblitz]

I would love this tbh

[@flow185]

Thats never gonna happen It would be a net money loss. Its not.fun but the big reason why thr internet is like that is money

[@blast_processing6577]

@@flow185 : If the growing popularity of a search engine like Wibly is any indication, it's up to individuals what kind of internet they are a part of -- web 3.0 and web3 (and their successors) probably aren't going to disappear, but that doesn't mean web 2.0 can't thrive in its own right. *Edit:* I'd be willing to bet for people that have offline personal pursuits or creative hobbies, a web 2.0 diet would be really beneficial.

[@santtu6930]

The last sentence, definitely

[@phantasmagorics]

Tumblr was the reason I got into UI/UX and web design. I would spend hours scrolling through themes and coding resources, and then coding my own themes. There was a huge community of themers on that site that were insanely talented, most of which have left by now unfortunately. I remember people coding intricate designs for navigation bars and headers, something you seldom see nowadays. The soulless minimalistic style that overtook absolutely every single aspect of social media killed the creativeness of these people, and took away the very reason I liked web design in the first place. Now with every single site wanting to look the same and AI taking over, web design is looking more and more like a thing of the past, and it's sad to see.

[@Drbeckerproductions]

I've been terminally online since 1999. It's painful to see the internet go from a medium for knowledge and self expression into a boring soulless place full of media that makes you angry. Despite enjoying the customization and colorful websites, I myself was lazy and used a myspace profile generator where I just tweaked a few things about the layout. I beleive I wanted my page to be in the middle of the road, not too basic, but not overdesigned. My friends profile on the other hand was so packed to the brim with anime gifs and blingees that it took 15-30 minutes for my 2005 Dell PC to slowly scroll to the bottom of her page, assuming it didn't freeze up.

[@strawby]

I really like what sheezy is doing where you can customize your profile but you also have the option to disable someone’s theme in case of accessibility and whatnot

[@herodoesstuff]

its so tragic tumblr is leaning rly hard into opening blogs only on dashboard as opposed to the actual blog page...ntm forcing ppl to use only "https" in your code p much made most themes unusable :') i missed the days of ppl changing their themes all the time and telling ppl to check it out. it was truly an art form

[@MagmaBlast]

I never used these sites that allowed you so much customization, but that pixelated aesthetic, frutiger... is very striking to me, I would like to know how those times were. There's something artistic and empowering about expressing anonymous individuality. Minimalism feels so corporate and soulless.

[@noracola5285]

Try Spacehey. I tried it because I missed those days & it delivers but I'm way to old now to relate to anyone there lol.

[@cheyenneb4263]

There is a myspace copycat called spacehey if you’d like to experience it

[@Signalhead]

Frutiger Aero was not a pixelated aesthetic. If that's what you see, you are looking at a low resolution image.

[@MagmaBlast]

@@Signalhead Haha, i know. I was just referring to the old internet.

[@maxwellversed]

Any video on the old internet (including shock sites) would be so good!! I had so much fun coding my SpaceHey last year when I found out about it. I’m bad at keeping up with social media in general, so I don’t use it much, but it’s one of the ones that make me the most excited about posting (and posting creative content)!

[@HNcomics]

Referring to your tattoos as stickers really got me. I've made the joke of pointing to tattoo on friends and saying "I like all your pictures" and really can't get over how funny that is to me

[@spaghettiking7312]

The internet is no longer ours.

[@YouAreMachines]

I could not agree more with this, it's insane how corporate and cold everything got. Like here's the one of the world's more customizable platform for expression but you're not allowed to customize anything without getting really technical. Some friends and I were going to make a neocity but since we had some basic web development knowledge it ended up just turning into a fully-fledged website and art blog. We even have a live radio. It has honestly been one of the best projects I've ever worked on and I wish stuff like this was more accessible to people in as big a way as it used to be - Yeebus

[@huffing_metal]

just checked it out! really cool stuff

[@carykh]

Great video! I miss the days when you could change your KZbin channel page to whatever you liked. 2013 was the year everything went flat...

[@五十八58]

OMG HI CARY HI HI HI

[@liz_violet]

i have every NEW site in this video exept a neocities, bc idk what to put on a website other then a portfolio. my tumblr is still decked out like a splatoon 2 lobby, my spacehey is pastel for now, and my 3ds is modded to swap between 10 custom themes. my phone case is clear so i can decorate inserts to put into the case, and my water bottle of choice is decked in stickers i got as extras for buying from geek shops. my keyboard has been customized with the fastest keyswitches and dark purplest kawaii keycaps. having to be stuck with a header and banner for 80% of websites is the bane of my existence, and does not help me show off all the things im into in one area! so having to learn to graphic design, JUST so i could do that in the limited space we are given...sucks? luckily photopea, pixlr, and krita exist bc otherwise i would be stuck.

[@strangeaelurus]

Omg I just got krita! How does it help with customization? genuinely asking lol

[@JackoHeartz]

As someone with a SpaceHey and a Neocities site, it feels so weird using social media with just... blank backgrounds and subscription services everywhere. Literally the only ones I can tolerate using post-spacehey-signup are youtube (ofc), pinterest and tumblr because memes and fandom spaces. Also, a bonus I've noticed is that updating my neocities site and changing stuff about is kinda like studying for my software development course that's starting soon. It's nice being able to prepare in advance with a project I'm passionate about.

[@icant_careless]

Art Fight profiles can still very much be customised. It's a niche part of the internet where artist have a 'fight' by drawing each other's characters every july. I just joined and don't know how to make my profile super personalised but I put a gif as my profile picture and it's so good why can't you do that anywhere else? This is why I clicked on this video and I really hope this aesthtic shift will change social media sites and allow me to put my silly little gif as a pfp it would make my life significantly better xd

[@hcbs1986]

Yet another commie site for losers. Neeeext

[@ICREAMTOHANDTIE]

artfight mentioned !!! ,,,!!!!1!!!!2!🎉🎉

[@charlotties_]

you have to pay for customization on artfight is the thing. which is fine, considering what artfight is, but it's not a free feature. thought i'd point that out!

[@icant_careless]

@@charlotties_ oh thank you for clarifying i didn't know that

[@DISGUSTING.VULTURE]

Finally people are actually acknowledging the fact that the internet is getting BORING with social media and that we can just leave to make our own pages or just go to other websites instead of just whining abt it and begging social media to "change" when it never will

[@1-eye-willy]

in 2006 i spent my days in school skipping class in the back of the multi media room learning HTML only for facebook to dominate two years later and turned HTML into a freaking joke.

[@mackfrack2187]

This is my first time watching your content and I love how you link to modern recreations of old sites! It’s nice to see niche communities still existing and bringing back the spirit of what’s lost

[@murkyseb]

I liked being able to customise my old tumblr and MySpace page, I loved how it could auto play songs I’d written when people would click on my page and then the play count would go up and I’d feel like I was succeeding as a musician. Great video

[@IncorrectHB]

This came at a perfect time as I just recently have gotten obsessed with neocities. I also love customization, from stickers on my water bottle and laptop, constantly changing phone case, and growing pin/button collection on my backpack

[@tnyaii]

A few years back I had an account on this thing called Everskies. It’s like a social media, blog space and game all in the same time, you could customize your own avatar, profile (with gifs, music, crazy backgrounds and all that), play mini games and talk with other people. I’m a teenage part of Gen-Z, so I haven’t lived to see all those crazy customizable profiles, but I love customize everything so I do yearn for things like that, sometimes. Great video ! edited: just created a spacehey account lol

[@neru1584]

Everskies is an AMAZING site but it was brought out awhile back and now the support team will ban you for no reason (like every other website) and won't respond to your messages asking why. Honestly I miss everskies from a few years back, even if it was full of chronically online kids who got into arguments over what badges you had on your profile lol

[@scrbblcat]

i’m in the same boat as you lol i think im gonna make a spacehey account after school today :)

[@tnyaii]

@scrbblcat I'm on SpaceHey for like 4 months already, sometimes it feels a bit unusual and weird in comparison with modern social media websites, but it’s a lot of fun and I’ve met some great people there! I hope you’ll have as much fun with it as I do :)

[@giangeegibb]

Wonderful video! While I wasn’t old enough to have social media accounts during the ‘90s - ‘00s, I remember browsing the Internet a ton, and I remember it just felt so much more vibrant. Websites all felt so unique and distinct from one another. I hope that the push back in that direction really takes shape, I really miss that personal touch everything used to have!

[@chaos8775]

thanks for mentioning new sites, i really love costumizing everything! and i really wanted to make a website like those myspace ones in early 2000s i am customizing every single part of my life and social media was the only place left, now i can customize those too! the first thing i install on a phone is those app cover changing apps, i use a transparent phone case just to fill it with my random drawings, and as an alt person, the way i dress is really more original than usual people i really would love to see the internet become something good!

[@GregCubed]

Fantastic video, I weep for old internet customization 😭 Especially here on KZbin, as a graphic designer I know I would have a field day customizing the hell out of my channel theme if we still had all the features we used to have. Really hope that things swing around soon as you predict, we need to bring creativity back both on and off the web! No more corporate blandness, my heart can't take much more lol

[@Kalitayy]

You're a graphic designer. Well, I'm a UI designer. I'm supposed to be your worst enemy because we make website clean and responsive, thus making them bland and soulless. UI design is an inherently evil skill to have.

[@MadDoodles]

@@KalitayyDude, and I promise I say this with sincerity, I really think you need to talk to someone. You have been all over the place utterly shitting on yourself and it’s really, really unhealthy. And that’s not even going into how UX/UI design absolutely has artistry to it when allowed to (I forget who it is but check out the designer gushing over *just* the stamina wheel from Breath of the Wild). Artists and designers are not polar opposites and your skill set isn’t “evil”. Please, treat yourself better.

[@vincentbatten4686]

I started to have this realization after I played HypnoSpace Outlaw. It put the entire experience and the vast difference in how the internet used to be in stark perspective for me.

[@dreamiiloid]

Everskies feels very myspace-y in its customizability too which I love

[@NickOwens]

I completely agree with "Make the internet weird again", I really miss KZbin's customisation specifically since that's the site I've spent the most time on in my time on the internet.

[@ghawkins7106]

I LOVE UR GLASSES + thank U for showing me neocities. I've been looking at platforms like it (SpaceHey etc) and none of them have felt very cohesive to me but neocities seems to scratch my personalization itch. It's really sad to see modern social media strip people of who they want to express themselves as (on the platform), and favoring instead to value the numbers or content itself. There's a topic I've been experimenting with music lately of "context", how notes or phrases fall in line and not just what they are. Context is vital because any piece or phrase can be a good one, but it might not be the right one for what's around it. Since apps like Instagram don't have any way of contextualizing your content, your content becomes the context. Instead of expressing what you want to express I see many people expressing what fits the context of the other things they posted. It's really difficult for me to be on these apps and see my friends being displayed instead of expressing themselves.

[@ChalkMuncher]

As a 2005 kid who never got to experience these kinds of websites yet yearns for the aesthetic creativity of them, when steam started to give users a lot of customization options it was just amazing to me (unfortunately nobody looks at other people’s steam profiles, and frankly why would they? 😔 but i still appreciate my ability to customize)

[@soft-sugar22]

OMG THIS IS THE BEST. I love customisation sooo much especially on social media accounts. I love being able to change the colours of things, add fonts and gifs/pics which is why i’m still so drawn to things like tumblr. I literally hate minimalist designs so much and how everything is so bland now. I’ve been looking for a video covering this for ages ur my saviour 🙏 also u give me funkyfrogbait vibes! (huge compliment)

[@shloopp]

Making a Neocities page has been a lot of fun and a great way to understanding html more. I really like having full control over everything that goes on my blog. Its honestly been really fun and it really inspires me to be more creative. I love when someone says they looked at my blog because I'm really proud of it and it makes the frustration and time I spent on it feel worth it. I just wish more people were on there!

[@yourdailyvoid]

Just discovered your channel today, great vid btw! I wasn't in the internet during the 2000's and early 2010's but recently discovering how so much things are limited by corporations in the internet and computers in general is really just crazy. In the last months I discovered about the FLOSS community and it's amazing how much people are eager to customize and make the internet a place of art and communities and individualization, while corporations are literally addicting and tracking it's users for greed again, great video :v

[@thebarisu]

As a graphic designer, I've been taught to like minimalism in the past 10 years I've got my education in. As a kid born in 2000, my heart is still with Geocities, the customization abilities of KZbin, Tumblr, MySpace etc. Thank you for shedding a light to something that matttered so much to me. Subbed!

[@ryanwright7827]

steam is really the only "platform" that you can still customize pretty heavily

[@victorsamuel116]

But even then, they don’t focus so much on social profiles sadly

[@marisabelmunoz2246]

All these reasons is why I decided to invest in my own website to use as a whole profile/writing area and customization, LOVE IT!

[@Nyxay0]

As a new tumblr user, someone who made their account really recently (yes i exist >_

[@urlocalghost]

within the first 20 seconds I knew i'd love this video, YOU ARE SO REAL !!! literally everything I own is covered in stickers or pins

[@SublimeYadon]

Facebook has never been big on customization, but a HUGE point of nostalgia for me is being a little kid with a Facebook my sister made me and browsing Bumper Stickers and Flair. Bumper Stickers were these square images you could add to your profile, usually silly aphorisms or early memes. Flair was presented as a big cork board that you could pin button-shaped images to. I don't know when they got rid of them, but I wish I could look back at the Flair board I had when I was too young to be on the internet. It was probably just like, the Star Wars logo and Pikachu and a bunch of images blandly representing things I liked, but that was such a huge first form of expression for me as a kid. I never see anyone talk about Flair, and the only things I can find about it online are people missing it. KZbin's customization is also sorely missed. I'm old enough that a video website was amazing to me, but young enough that KZbin has been a major entertainment source for me for almost twenty years. If a website or video game gives me something to customize, I WILL do it and grind for more customization options.

[@syrup_n_waffles]

Thank you for bringing up Flair! I feel like no one talks about the stuff that used to be on Facebook. I have so much nostalgia for things like Food Fight, where you could " purchase" different things and throw them at your friend's pages, or the little rabbit widget you put on your page and deck out in armor. I had almost convinced myself I had made up all these different games and things you could add to your profile. I really feel like things started to go downhill when they got rid of them. :(

[@SublimeYadon]

@@syrup_n_waffles DESPERATELY do I miss silly little pre-smart phone, pre-microtransaction widgets and virtual pets. Google used to, a thousand years ago, let you set a custom version of the Google search page (I think called My Google?) where kid me LOADED it with virtual pets and useless little toys.

[@Spookery]

Wow, I totally forgot about Flair until this comment :O

[@winteriris13]

I'm on a "old internet" deepdive right now and I really liked this video ^^ I didn't grow up with the boom of customizability on the web cause I was sorta busy being a baby in the 2000s but still being able to learn a coding program and make cool things is so fun :D and the fact that there are people that still craze that tackiness, not even purely for nostalgia because there are young people also getting into it these days too. i hope the chaos of the early internet always has a place on the web for freaks and geeks to hang out peacefully :3

[@abacategameplays7476]

This video is great for eye contact training

[@ouch892]

The state of the internet makes me depressed

[@lordpeeps1]

A little note on the ps5, you can customize the console as the white ps5 is the default but you can remove the plates for other colors. But regardless the ps5 is still a good example because the console itself does not have themes or anything unlike the ps4 and 3 which did.

[@foxesofautumn]

I was happy to just get the red plate variant for my PS4. The bar is on the floor.

[@eyv88]

discovering neocities a few months ago was my saving grace! been learning html ever since. it's so refreshing to have a personal hub different from all the monotone "linktrees" and to be able to make your website an art piece by itself.

[@Mantalon]

we must destroy the centralized web

[@Luengast]

Real

[@xjewelmarie]

"if it wasn't already obvious, I was on Tumblr a lot" has me dead bc literally SAME 😂💀

[@URnightmares162]

I LOVE NEOCITIES AND SPACEHEY!!!

[@everettlmao]

Oh my goodness, I am so happy I’m not the only person talking about this!!! I love hearing people talk about this topic

[@8y7-m6y]

12:45 New user to tumblr in the past few years here, never knew custom themes existed, I might have heard of passing glances of them but nothing that I remembered

[@trixjoyce]

I miss profile customization so so SO much! I still look for how much you can do with a profile when I sign up for some new social media and I feel old for that lol. Because some younger people don't care as much, but that is because they cannot understand what they haven't seen. I was happy to hear about spacehey though and thinking about joining because of the nostalgia :)

[@Aldersnap]

I've never heard of the DS themes and they look amazing!! I would kill for those to be on the switch- I want a splatoon one with new sound effects for when you press things, aaaaa i'd love it! They've been adding customization for your profile picture on the switch (at a snail's pace, but hey), so I can be hopeful they'll add new themes.. eventually. You can currently only use platinum points to get pfp characters that weren't available by default, and also get them frames and backgrounds but that's it so far. The themes part of the settings looks so empty without more colors, it's just light and dark mode! I'd love a pale green version or something if game-inspired themes are beyond them -0-

[@tackydesign6064]

What a wonderful channel to stumble upon. Great content!

[@emmaniez4514]

Tumblr had kind of a revival the last few years, especially for teenagers. I'm fourteen, I've been on Tumblr for about a year and most (if not all) of my mutuals are ppl around my age. There's a lot of full-grown adults on there but there's also a little group of teenagers just having fun in a corner. Tumblr is probably the social media I use and enjoy the most, even if it's not popular anymore and most people my age don't know about its existence, actually I think that's what makes the experience better since it creates a sense of comunity most other social media platforms don't have.

[@redmakesvideoss]

ive been thinking about this for so long i saw the thumbnail and title and instantly hooked, new sub

[@butterfly22432]

i definitely recommend spacehey! it reminds me of decorating my tumblr blog back in middle school and there’s a nice little community

[@hcbs1986]

I’ve been on SpaceHey since it’s launch, modern SpaceHey is a mess which only thrives off the name of a platform it will never live up to, I would recommend you leave it as soon as you can

[@Kirbyoverflowers]

The internet used to feel like walking through an entire city, now it feels like we're all crammed into one single sad corporate building

[@thepap000]

Having a different username on different platforms is actually good online hygiene

[@mercuriani]

Back in 2014 I’d customize my tumblr with themes and even added playlists to my blog. I wish apps like tiktok and instagram would allow the same type of personalization, it really gives personality to someone’s account

[@dolleastar]

0:14 i need that backpack

[@EpicZombieFartsO_o]

Me 2 🙏

[@ladycrush069]

i was introduced to neocities by youtuber named dimwit, i was so in love and felt a lot of nostalgia for old style internet even though i wasnt born or too young to experience it lol. ive been heavily considering leaving instagram and tiktok and posting everything on a neocities blog but i think im too lazy to do that for now lmao

[@anjay1076]

i love that platforms like SpaceHey (myspace remade) still give you the opportunity to customize your profile and interact with others. i miss it, it was so fun.

[@iamtimsson]

18:10 thank you

[@xCloverGreenx]

I think this is why I was so obsessed with Instagram stories for a couple years. I could add images, gifs, music, filters. It was a breath of fresh air and I'd always watch my own stuff until it disappeared after 24 hs

[@youraftermyrobotbee]

I kinda miss online customization, but I kinda don't miss the accessibility nightmare: the most garish clashing-text-and-background-colors imaginable (or the opposite, barely-readable pink-on-pink "kawaii" color schemes), inscrutably tiny text, flashing gifs, etc. If that's not one of the reasons it fell by the wayside, it's one of the reasons we should maybe think twice about bringing it back.

[@healerlaz]

This was such a fun video! I remember spending so much time customizing my online presence (also through sites like piczo, and even Habbo profiles, when they got introduced). As alluded to in the video, there are still certain areas of the internet that allow you to present yourself how you want to be presented. One of the places I "let my freak flag fry" is on Wikipedia! As a registered user, you have a user page where you can let your creativity flourish! There's a lot of unique user pages, once you start looking. I recently saw one that mimicked Windows 98!

[@blake-r7t]

you will burn eternally when you are face to face with god and refer to him as "jod"

[@Tora-mw1nb]

As an artist, I can say I really appreciate the toy house website for how customizable it can be! As well as the art fight website. While both are for mainly artists- especially those who mostly make original characters, many people still customize their accounts! It’s lots of fun to see, and I’ve actually been having a blast recently using BBCodes to customize my personal account with gifs, fonts, colors, and silly pngs💖💖💖 I’ve tbh never been online except for on those websites and KZbin, so I didn’t realize what I was seeing used to be very common! Now I have more of an appreciation for it, and hope to see more customization on other sites and apps! It’s just very sweet and fun to see everyone putting their own personal touch to their accounts- you can rally tell how much effort and love they put into it!

[@luizzeroxis]

The editing in this one is freakin amazing, randy's being cool as always!!

[@larakleyb7844]

THIS VIDEO IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT THANK YOU

[@yourladyyofsorrows]

As a teenager I can confirm: the children do yearn for 2009. Everything was more customizable, and the internet seemed to be more about people sharing what they were doing and having fun, aside from all the drama sites ( Sticky drama 💀) early internet was just more intimate and carefree. Also, it's crazy to me that on tiktok I've started to see kids wishing they could have been preteens/teens in 2017??? All I was doing back then was looking at grunge aesthetics on tumblr and duct taping christmas lights to my walls because i wanted one of those cool pinterest bedrooms with all the posters, lights and colored walls. In short, I love my spacehey profile and I cry because I'll never go to warped tour. Also I use this cool chrome extension called customtube that lets you use any youtube UI all the way from 2009 to present day. Currently commenting from mid 2013 lol

[@isoentropica]

the fact that you begun the video with 2008 toyota corolla is amazing

[@jefferyjones8399]

I had a Tripod site... that was kinda like Geo Cities. lol... also, I am 34 so you know damn well I was ALL ABOUT MySpace customization. I still can't believe they had us 16 year olds using basic HTML on these profiles. lol I remember being annoyed that everyone was jumping over to Facebook because of the lack of customization options.

[@w4lion4w48]

for me personally i love customizing my steam profile. All the diffrent themes and displays you can have. I love being able to change my name every single day and show of diffrent things all the time like personal art i made or my hours on a single game. I dont think anything will be able to rival the love i have for steam customization

[@SUMLIGHTZ]

spacehey and neocities are goated for this

[@TheMimoJimi]

Yeah, I want profile customization back

[@gyroninjamodder]

I think there are many factors that contribute to it: - it reduces the uniformity of the site and maybe people could get confused on what site they are ob - it can look ugly, I'm sure designers are frustrated when users soil the designs they have made - it is not very flexible. If the designers want to redesign the site because it's been 0.2 seconds since the last design was finished they don't want everyone's old themes to be causing inconcsistencies with the new design. - users can make themes that are make the site unusuable on certain devices / screen dimensions - it's expensive to develop proper customization and there may not be much of a return on investment for doing so especially if not many users even take the time to do customization - user customizations may not be easily adapatable or testable when a site can be accessed from many different kinds of devices. Random users aren't probably not going to be making sure smart tv users are having a good user experience.

[@Kalitayy]

Random users might not be able to do it, but they can certainly hire someone who can do it for them: artists.

[@gyroninjamodder]

@@Kalitayy A broken page has reputational damage for the website itself, and not just the user that made it. While technically a competent artist could be hired by users, in practice many are just going to do things the quick and dirty way and not care about the edge cases.

[@Kalitayy]

⁠@@gyroninjamoddernow that you brought edge cases, an UI/UX designer's job is to handle edge cases. But do you think average users care about them? All I'm seeing is that users just want beautiful websites

[@seigeengine]

@@gyroninjamodder Your entire spiel basically only applies in the current regime. Nobody treated a bad myspace page like it was myspace's fault, because we understood that each page was customized. And if the designers know customization is a core feature, they're not going to get arbitrarily butthurt when people use that feature.

[@gyroninjamodder]

@@seigeengine Yes, it applies to the current times because everyone's standards have increased by a lot. And due to competition it's hard to go to a solution that is worse. Now these platforms are mainstream and are used by a very wide demographics of people. Everyone from kids to elderly people who don't know how to use a computer are expected to be able to use it.

[@jasons6491]

Thanks for making and sharing this video! Man, I loved Geocities. My first leap into learning HTML was copying and pasting pieces from sites I liked on there to make my own, and I've been a general code tinkerer ever since both as a hobby and as a profession. I've got a Neocities page now that, just like my old Geocities, isn't updated nearly as often as it should be. It doesn't have any animated GIFs like my Geocities page had, but it has its own theming I came up with on my own just because I thought "what if the site was almost solely in black and white, with lots of dithering instead of colors"?

[@Cartoonkal]

I miss 2011 KZbin. One of my goals back then was to become a KZbin partner just so I could have a channel banner lol. I also miss it when tumblr had more people on it. The website has so many great features, it stinks that it's been largely abandoned.

[@jennielizross]

Here are my other theories: 1. If people spend too much time on customization they will spend less time on their feeds where the ads are which is how these social media companies make money 2. The simplicity of the interface and lack of customization makes it easier and less daunting for new users to sign up and gets them to start looking at their feeds (i.e. ads) quicker 3. I wouldn’t be surprised if these companies have done studies that show that too many choices may overwhelm the average person, decreasing new users That all being said, i love customization and i think that platforms where customization was one of the huge selling points will only hurt themselves by removing those features.

[@clownydrawsart]

0:12 omg i wanna do this lol! i already have my so many sketchbooks covered in stickers.. but the problem is it's considered "cringe" now to do :( what should I do

[@URnightmares162]

Who cares, everyone keeps calling things cringe that people enjoy. DO IT! STICKERS ARE NOT CRINGE!

[@clownydrawsart]

@URnightmares162 thank you :]

[@paupowpow]

to be cringe is to be free

[@mellohd]

i wasn't even born yet at the peak of internet customization and I already miss it, i made a neocities and never had more fun customizing something in my life

[@Lépirus]

Impossible to watch this ant not think about the incredible game "Hypnospace Outlaw". Makes me realize how much the game resembles actual internet history