word of warning: this won't be like my normal output, it's less researched, more feelings

the web and email are amazing - they are both decentralised, open, and personal. theoretically, anyone can write a web page about whatever they want, and anyone can send an email to whomever they know.

and it doesn't stop there, it's not just that anyone can write a web page or send an email, but anyone can publish and serve that page, and anyone can run that server you sent that email to (or from). it would not be too hyperbolic to say that the web and email are probably the biggest success stories in decentralised technology since the mass adoption of the internet began.

being able to publish pretty much any design or text is such an empowering feature of the web and it's a colossal shame that so many of the web's users don't use this potential, staying instead within the walled gardens of commercial services. this is not to imply that this is immutable and unchanging, while the centralisation of many people's web experiences has further centralised into just a few corporate websites - simultaneously, it's gotten easier for anyone to carve out their own corner of the web, at lower or even no cost.

creating your own personal website opens up so many creative opportunities, control over the way you present yourself to the rest of the web, and is generally a fun thing to do. having your own website allows you to take back control over your web presence from the large platforms that have for too long centralised communication and connection between the people who actually inhabit the web.

if you, the person reading this, haven't already got a personal web presence of some kind, i'd highly recommend changing that. HTML isn't scary, and you can do almost everything for free (and the rest is very cheap). html for people is a great resource for getting started with the languages of the web, and if you then want to publish your site somewhere other than Neocities, consider a very low cost basic VPS plan, with either a plain webserver or with a tool like my own IrisPanel control panel (post coming soon about that)

the small web is beautiful, a personal, friendly departure from the centralisation that has taken place towards few platforms that don't have their users best interests at heart

so go, find cool pages, make a corner of the web your own, and bring a spark of personality back to the web.