BubbleQuartz's Bloggeroo

As an Internet Veteran* and a web developer, I have a lot of strong opinions about the Internet and the direction it's going in.

Now I'm gonna allow myself a rant and hopefully convert at least one of you, and then I'll go back to obsessing over imaginary people. Ok? Ok. *I've been online in one way or other since the late 90s/early 2000s.

Yes, much of the Internet sucks now...

In the beginning, everyone had their own site. Fansites. Art portfolios. Online journals (the word "blog" wasn't invented yet). Lots of weird places you'd stumble upon by link-hopping from site to site.

But of course, as soon as the technology took off, the market noticed. Social media came along and made it easier to create an account on their sites than make something for yourself, so that's what everyone did. And here we are now.

Instead of a million little houses built by passionate individuals and all having streets and pathways linking to each other, we have these massive walled gardens of rented flats built by commercial interest. They're keeping their users like animals in a zoo where everything is an account and a subscription and an ALGORITHM (gods I hate algorithms almost as much as I hate AI) and monetized by taking our data* and using it to show us ever-increasing amounts of ads. *Collecting more data is all this age verification/chat control nonsense is about btw. I don't believe for a second they're actually interested in "protecting children" or anything of the sort.

...but there's still hope

Good news is, the personal non-monetized Internet is still out there. It's just been buried under a fuckton of ad-infested garbage and can be tricky to find.

There are still entire communities of people taking pride in making their own personal websites instead of relying solely on social media.

The main reason is of course because it's plain ol' fun, but another big point is to break out of the zoo. To take back some semblance of control over your digital life and contribute to an Internet that is still made by and for regular people, not for corporations. If we can make websites ourselves, we negate some of the power they hold over us. No need to get quite so devastated when Tumblr/AO3/Meta/etc yet again changes something for the worse if you always have your own site to fall back on.

As neat as it is to have everyone on social media, I wish more people would set aside the time to make their own sites.

We all live online, might as well have your own house. A house you can build however you want and can be taken down and moved somewhere else should the need arise.

"But but but my audience..?"

Yeah, sure, the zoos are useful for meeting people and getting your work seen. I'm here too, aren't I? I understand you want to be where most of the eyes are. What I'm getting at is: YOU SHOULD HAVE BOTH!

Use whatever to network and find your friends and fans - but don't put all your digital eggs in one corporate basket. Just like you sync your phone to the cloud and back up your hard drive (you are backing up your hard drive, right? Right?!) you should back up your creations and post them somewhere where you have control over them. Somewhere people can see your things without having to sign up for another bloody account.

While I realise I make webweaving sound like some activism thing, it really is a cool hobby.

I can't overstate how fun and rewarding it is to have your own place on the Internet! ❣️ Poking around with the layout and content and learning how it all works under the hood. ❣️ The thrill when you wrangle the browser into submission and get it to work exactly how you want it ❣️ Making friends and trading knowledge with other web-weavers ❣️ Not to mention the pride of showing the link to people like "yeah, I made this. And I made the website it is on too 😎"

It's beyond worth it for the skills you learn and the people you meet! At least think about it, please.

"But I can't code or design, how would I even make a website? It's too much work"

Can you take a prewritten text document and edit it? That's all you need to start. Can you edit your Tumblr theme? Shit, you're halfway there already.

Creating a simple personal site really doesn't have to be that complicated.

There are boatloads of free ready-made layouts and templates you can edit and free graphics so you don't have to start from scratch. Many websites don't even have graphics at all. There are also free content management systems that, once set up, allows you to edit most things without any coding at all. Installing, say, WordPress takes 5 minutes if even that.

Not to mention the myriad of very beginner-friendly tutorials and even real live people to ask.

Us personal web enthusiasts are THRILLED whenever someone new wants to join our ranks and most will fall over themselves trying to help. We're here for you. Hell, I'm here for you. My DMs are always open, don't hesitate to give me a shout if you wanna talk websites 🤝 (or previously mentioned imaginary people, I'm not fussy haha)

A few links to get you started:

32bit.cafe is a community of personal web enthusiasts and a great place to start. They have a massive list of resources and you can join the forum or discord if you want to chat with people.

Sadgrl has a lot of guides and resources too.

Pixel Shannon's guide to making your own website

Neocities is a free host and also has some community features

check out the web revival tag right here on Tumblr

More about the personal web movement:

Intro to the web revival by Melon

The IndieWeb community

Hello, world, I have a solution to the Internet problem

Visit MelonLand's Surf Club for loads of examples of personal websites

Now, go build your house. And then send me the link. I'm not joking, I really do want to see what you come up with!

I trust him

The above image is a historical artifact. Colima dog. It dates back to circa 100 BCE-300 CE. (x)

And, around two thousand years later it was originally shaped with care, painted with love, and adored… someone draws it. Draws it using a new technological device that allows modern people to shape things with care, paint with love, and even move them -on a screen, glowing.

And the said person decides to share it with the world. The whole world adores it.

I love the connection between past and today. We were humans back then, and we are still the same.

I clicked on a seal video but the title, description and evcerything else are from a cosmic/liminal space horror video that was underneath it.

The fucking comments in the wrong context are sending me.

EVERYONE IS SO SCARED OF THIS BABY SEAL

and EVEN WHEN things were more muted/neutral, the neutrality was OFFSET by ACCENT COLORS and HIGH CONTRAST between the wood tones and everything ELSE

ALSO AMERICAN COLONIAL INTERIORS POPPED OFF, Y'ALL (IN TERMS OF COLOR/COZINESS)

PEOPLE USED WHITEWASH AND COLORFUL TRIM OR EVEN JUST COLORFUL FURNITURE IF THEY COULD AFFORD TO DO SO

AND DON'T GET ME STARTED ON FRENCH AND BRITISH AND AMERICAN WALLPAPERS

"ELIZABETH" YOU CRY, "WHY ARE YOU BEING SO EXTRA THIS MORNING?! IT'S MONDAY"

Because, my friend, my war on GREIGE will NEVER end.

Historic interiors were filled with LIFE and LIGHT and COLOR. ALWAYS HAVE BEEN.

Part of the reason we don't see a lot of textile art is because, frankly, textiles tend to degrade over time - especially ones that had utility! And yes, pigments and weaving and dying all boosted the expense of things, when we were finally reliably block-printing fabrics and broad reams of paper, it was no longer just the wealthy who could afford pretty patterns!

In the Americas, a far wider variety of pigments also became available because of the abundance of... well, a shitton of flora and minerals, some of which weren't as common in Europe.

WHY THE HIGHLIGHTER COLORS? you ask.

CANDLES.

Those colors reflect candlelight and natural sunlight REALLY WELL.

Humans LOVE bright colors, it's NOT just a thing for kids. We live in a brilliant, vibrant, multifaceted world. We ALWAYS have.

(If ever you have the opportunity to visit the Stencil House at the Shelburne Museum in Vermont (pictured above at 3, 4, and 5), I highly recommend.)

And that's before you get into American painted murals:

so, ways to get around this:

turn off AI results. they're literally nonsense to us

don't use pinterest because the sources/provenance is often hard to trace

a standard internet search can be okay, but museum collections are the top tier (list of collections below this list)

instead of broad terms like victorian, regency, tudor, renaissance etc. try using the decade you're looking for. if you're not sure of what decade it is but have a vague image in your head, look on the fashion history timeline and just jump around until you find it. but even changing to e.g. 19th century will give better results than victorian

including terms like womenswear/menswear, daywear, formal wear, evening wear, court dress should increase the value of your search too

including "fashion plates" in your search can give you a nice impression of the intended silhouettes of the era. some of these might be a little stylised but will show you what was considered in vogue

for pre-fashion plate eras or things like makeup and styling, you'll have to look at portraiture or manuscripts. these are harder to actually find what you're looking for, but searching museum collections and limiting results to specific date ranges will be your friend

when looking at art, do bear in mind sometimes artists would paint fabric extra flow-y to show off their skills. it might not have been exactly like that in terms of fabric weight or drape. so, a pinch of salt required!

if you find something on image search where the provenance is dubious, reverse image search and you might find a source! i've been able to trace random pinterest images to real sources, but this does take a lot of time and effort and is often not worth the headache

some online resources and museum collections:

fashion history timeline is an invaluable resource if you're trying to get a feel for everything and should be your first port of call. it'll also link to good examples

the met has a vast number of extant examples of clothing, as well as fashion plates

costume institute fashion plates is a subcollection of the met for fashion plates (1800s-1922)

v&a also has many extant garments, fashion plates, and incredible articles on clothing and aesthetics. read the details of the objects because they'll often reveal a lot about the piece

lacma is good for C19th-20th pieces

nypl digital collection for photographs

national portrait gallery or similar for portraiture, or literally any museum in your country that has historical art

national museums scotland can be useful situationally but might be oddly specific

stout style history is a great collection for finding image references for fat people wearing historical clothes. survival bias of a lot of museum pieces tends towards smaller clothing that couldn't be repurposed, but this aims to counter that. it's not sortable, but is still a really nice resource

wikimedia commons is surprisingly handy! and the images, if you should need to link/repost them, are public domain

auction websites sound like a funny one to recommend. some won't have mannequins and some will. just look up historical garment auctions and you'll find some!

worn old books