I'm bitter and gay boys, bitter and gay

This is a form of backdoor bigotry from both normative facts (there are more straight than gay relationships) and well represented bigoted beliefs (men are superior to women).

I had to turn this off, but it's something that allows Windows and anyone using your device to generate text/images.

Idk when I was younger, you could just go and go and find exciting new websites full of whatever cool things you wanted to explore. An overabundance of ways to occupy your time online.

Now, it's just... Social media. That's it. Social media and news sites. And I'm tired of social media and I'm tired of the news.

You're right that the internet is smaller than it used to be, but there's still some cool stuff left in the corners. I'd recommend checking checking out Neocities if you haven't--it's an independent web hosting platform like Geocities of the old web, and there are hundreds of interesting and active pages discoverable both through their search function and through web buttons (links attached to small pictures with the title of a website) within the websites themselves. Here are three examples of web buttons you may find in link pages:

Most Neocities websites have link pages or button collections with anywhere from tens to hundreds of these. Don't be afraid to explore!

If you're looking for something more like a search engine, I can point you towards Marginalia. It's not a particularly smart engine, but it's perfectly usable if you've ever been taught to use search engines back when they were mostly run through keywords instead of full sentence comprehension. There's also an "about" and "tips" section on the front page with more information. The algorithm of Marginalia can be filtered by the user to allow, disallow, or require JavaScript depending on your needs, plus there are filters designed specifically to prioritize web 1.0 sites or mostly text-based ones. It is possible to search for modern websites with it, but it can return websites from just about any decade (since the invention of the web, obviously) so long as they contain the information you're looking for. For example, here are some random interesting sites I've found using Marginalia:

Native Languages of the Americas: Native American Cultures

BASIC HTML COMPETENCY IS THE NEW PUNK FOLK EXPLOSION!

Earthbound Text Labs by Bill Eager

The possibilities for discovery are truly endless.

Now you might want to know about directories. These make browsing for websites easier, but require you to read through and judge which ones to visit, as there aren't algorithms ranking the sites besides the whim of whoever coded the directory. Some of them have themes, others don't. Here are two that I've used:

Yesterlinks Directory

Ichigo Directory

Directories can be harder to come by just by surfing the net, but they aren't impossible to find. Many personal websites have their own directories of interesting sites hidden within them.

Webrings are similar to directories, but are actually more community-based. You have to register your website to be a part of a webring, usually by sending an email to whoever runs it and meeting some kind of entry criteria. For example, my personal website used to be a part of a webring called Sweet Dreams, which was for websites that heavily utilize color palettes and images of cute things, particularly sweets. Webrings will give you access to a widget upon entry that allow visitors and other members to browse between the registered websites in a massive ring, ergo, where the term gets its name. Webrings can have any theme or criteria for entry. If you can make a website about it, you can find a webring for it.

Now, you might be wondering about social media alternatives. I can't offer much, but I can nudge you towards the idea of forums. Here's one I found that could really use some traffic. I also browse a bit on MelonLand forum, which is actually closed right now--it's currently closed on Mondays--but on any other day of the week, you can find a fun community there dedicated to web revival. You can find it through MelonLand's main page. I'd also recommend checking out SpaceHey, which is a MySpace clone that's customizable and easy to use.

Are you a word nerd like me, and my father before me?

Then may I introduce you to...

This is one of the things that makes Kerry such an interesting character to me. Night City moves on, everyone moves on, the world keeps spinning no matter who dies. Except Kerry.

Pre-2000's Night City still had mostly the same mentalities and sentiments (that's part of the world building; the world of Cyberpunk has stagnated) so we can't really say that Kerry is "from a different time". Chronologically he is, compared to V's other friends and associates, but if anything, his history with the city should cement in him that people die and the city moves on. But he just can't.

When Johnny died, he was a pretty big public figure (he likes to say Samurai was like an unknown indie band but we know he has skewed memories and the TTRPG tells us differently) and a lot of people mourned him. A lot of people also assumed he was being held captive by Arasaka, which he kinda is actually, based on the "Where's Johnny?" graffiti we see around NC. But people who knew Johnny eventually moved on, too. Die hard fans who worshipped him may have held on to their grief, but Rogue and Denny and Nancy etc. all moved on with their lives. Johnny flew too close a sun he shouldn't have been orbiting to begin with, and suffered the all too common consequences. Were they sad? Sure. Were they surprised? Not in the slightest.

But to Kerry, it wasn't about any of that. Johnny had something that could have changed the world, if only he knew what he was doing, if he wasn't such a hothead and reckless. And Kerry could see that. I'm sure some people will say "well he was in love with Johnny, of course he had trouble moving on," but so was Rogue, and she got past it eventually, even if she still thinks about Johnny often, she still accepts what happened. But Kerry couldn't.

There's so many theories you could craft about why he couldn't move on (lack of closure, unrequited love, anger that kept stewing, any number of things) but I find it interesting that if you choose the Tower ending, Kerry couldn't move on from V either.

V's friends and love interests move on with their lives, unaffected by V's disappearance. They benefitted from V's presence and actions already, now it's time to keep going. But you know who didn't? Who said he was coming right back to Night City to see V? Kerry. Even when he's doing the best mentally that he has in literally half a century, he still can't move on.

Kerry has benefitted a lot from the capitalist nightmare going on in Cyberpunk's universe, he's a millionaire (maybe more, depending on the economy of the game world) and a household name across a lot of the world; and yet he's so sentimental and caring and emotional about so much that the cyberpunk world normally numbs people to. I don't know why, I don't know what about his upbringing or his personality or his past makes him so soft, but he is, and Night City hasn't hardened him in that way. And I find that so fascinating, and so unbelievably beautiful.

Kerry waits 50 years for Johnny, and he waits years for V, because he can't let people go, whether they're his friends or something more or something in between. We even see that he still considers all of Samurai his friends even when he hasn't spoken to them in a decade or more. Call it sentimental, call it nostalgia, call it clingy I don't care, but Kerry doesn't let people go, and that feels so out of place in Cyberpunk, in such a wonderful way.

Kerry: nobody's gonna listen to that shit Johnny.

Johnny: it's about the message, Ker. About being anti-consumerist. About producing shit that doesn't fit into the media cycle.

Kerry: you're on fucking shrooms, man