IN PROGRESS
There has to be something beyond. I'm not thinking afterlife or anything like that when I say this. Do people honestly believe this is it? That there's nothing else to this world besides the mundanity we experience every single day? Or better: how can we be sure anything of this is real? I post on a very small forum (about 20 active users), where we discuss mysteries and the paranormal. One of the most discussed topics is exactly this. If what we see is real. It's not as "schizo" as you may think. It's a form of escapism and more importantly, a way too keep your sanity during these times. It's comforting to think that one day you'll wake up and be back home. Or thinking of ways to go back and forget about this experience we're having. That's the actual wildness out there. You can sometimes stumble across relics from the "old world" - maybe AI art could be a way the old reality is leaking through? Who knows. But from what I've gathered, the old world is not very similar to this one. For example, the architecture might be different, certain brands might belong to different owners, history might have changed. Some people might not actually exist, but others might. It's a weird thing to think about, I admit.
It first started with time resets - the idea that CERN or whoever will reset time back to the start of the pandemic. Some people weren't satisfied with a simple time reset, so they made up a theory that our souls diverted from the original timeline somehow. Who knows if it's true or not, or what might actually be the mechanics behind it, sounds interesting enought so let's think about it. The reason I used 'kwangya' in the title is because I like to listen to aespa's songs while reading more about this theory. I'd also like to think their style is more mainstream back in the OG timeline but alas. That's just my wishful thinking.
(I should really make a remote viewing diary, because I'm not sure if this type of content fits the blog section.)
I was browsing few unnamed forums and websites and found threads about personal websites, especially those on NeoCities. I've seen users dumping on certain websites for just looking pretty and not offering anything else. But what do they expect from personal websites which are often managed by teenagers and college students? Life advice? These critics are always in a thrill seeking mode i.e. deliberately searching for websites they deem "interesting" and discarding everything else. I guess by "interesting" they mean sites that don't look aesthetically pleasing, but offer some type of content the user wants to see. More often than not it's something incredibly niche, which doesn't appeal to a younger audience, which is most of NeoCities.
It's plain old dopamine chasing disguised as something more sophisticated. You can see this in travel vloggers, when they claim a destination sucks, because it's not something akin to an adult Disneyland. People can't appreciate things for the sake of it. There always has to be some type of a gimmick for something to be worth it. I can't understand why the same people who cry about the death of personal web are then upset when a small website isn't managed in the same way a large corporate one is. Yeah, no 💩 an html website isn't gonna give the same dopamine hit as twitter. No one should change their personality or style just for the sake of pandering to the lowest common denominator. That's how we got social media and people still hate it.
Some users complain that NeoCities hosts "pointless" sites, that allegedly offer nothing just nostalgia baiting and journal entries from "boring" people or normies. The normie bit is especially comical to me, because most people who complain about normies are just glorified normies themselves and lose it whenever someone has an opinion other than whatever is pre-approved by the establishment. Creating a wacky website and complaining like an angsty teen over someone else's website doesn't magically un-normie you.
People don't make personal websites to entertain a myriad of pretentious wankers who want to pat themselves on the back over how "intelectual" or "sophisticated" they are, for allegedly taking interest in every niche topic under the Sun. Yeah sure I totally believe a CompSci graduate, who is mainly into gaming or fandoms or whatever, is very interested in my thoughts on Paracelsus. They want the oddities but without the "unpalatable" elements. No one is really interested in things that aren't seen as status symbols in a way. Of course they want to learn pointless (for them) trivia about your hobby, so they can repeat it to someone else and act all smart about it. You see this behavior mainly on sites like reddit, where they sometimes repeat downright disinfo, just because it sounded intelligent enough to them. So no matter how "interesting" you are according to their definition, you still have to dumb yourself down or censor yourself to appease them. I'm saying this from personal experience, they don't like it when you say stuff like astrology was akin to math back then (hence why all cultures have it), because they associate astrology with horoscopes and tiktok "witches".
Point is that people want to seem like they're very interested in whatever you're saying, but most of the time it's performative. Sorry, but I have a hard time believing their interest is genuine. Not to mention if you somehow deviate from the general consensus on whatever topic, they make their job to police and censor you for not repeating whatever is on wikipedia.