Ella's Manifesto

If you're new to the old web movement (that's fun to say), you might be a little, uh, surprised at the idea of having a "manifesto" on your webpage. If you're anything like me, when you saw the word "manifesto" in the first place, you probably thought, "Oh, wow, she's one of those, isn't she?"

I'm not here to convince you one way or another on that front, and really, I'm not here to convince you of anything at all. The truth is, when you make a website, it's a lot of work. You might feel like you need to justify that work - not necessarily to others, but to yourself, at least. Even simple webpages take hours and hours to design. Each little handmade graphic, if not borrowed, was lovingly crafted. Each paragraph was written, then rewritten.

What I'm saying is, this shit takes time. Even so I know it's worth it, no matter how small the audience for this is going to be.

I'm writing this in November of 2023. It's known by almost everyone on the internet that social media is not your friend. I don't really need to hash out all the ways it's unhealthy, dangerous, or invades your privacy. If you're here I'm going to assume you've heard all of that, and if you haven't, it's a quick web search away (but do me a favor and don't use Google, huh? Startpage is a good alternative). So, yes, a webpage like this is my little way to step away from some of that, it's true, but that's not why I'm here.

Do I wish things could go back to the way they were before social media monopolized our digital landscape? Not to put the whole old web community against me, but no, actually, I don't. Don't get me wrong, I have nostalgia like everybody else, but I don't think that the 90's or 00's "had it right" or anything. We were just growing up, you know? We were still figuring things out and that innocence was amazing at the time. We found some things that were very cool and beautiful back then, and we lost them when we dropped them for other genuinely cool and interesting things.

But as you know, those things are getting less cool. Somehow that happened so gradually and slowly to us we forgot what that old world was like, if we ever were lucky enough to know it at all. Most people I know these days seem to be cycling between one cloud of gray depressive content to the other cloud of angering, hurtful rhetoric. Underneath all of this, though, is the rest of the web.

The old internet never died. It's still a place you can go to, but not exactly in the way you might think. Most of those old pages are dead (unless they are being kept alive by the god-tier necromantic heroes of sites like Archive.org and a myriad of other people). If these pages aren't dead, they're like mine - they're buried.

Under the piles of rubble I found something I don't know if I have the proper words for. Bear with me and let me be dramatic for a second here.

So, to me, it's like finding the library of Alexandria buried under a combination game store, department store, and sex shop... except on a galactic scale with media we can't wrap our brains around the shape of.

It's like taking a left when you meant to take a right and slipping into another reality.

It's almost like a time machine, except it's actually a secret underground club of people with sensibilities so recently out of fashion you forget them when you're considering the events of the past.

It's that electric tingle of something exciting inbetween the grooves of your brain.

It's a maze of doors, hedges, jungles, deserts, oceans, and moonscapes, all laid out and waiting for you.

Sometimes you wake up inside the mind of another person, and see the world through their eyes.

It's the digital. It's de ja vu. It's the electric. It's the future.

Dare I say, it's cybherspace. :-D

I promise I'm not on drugs right now.

I don't know what I'm trying to tell you. Maybe I just had to try to put it into words, but I'm kind of shit at it to be honest. I know it sounds crazy and you're probably tired of the purple prose by now, but if you do dig through these things and watch people unwrap little pieces of their heart not because of social clout or money, but instead because in some inescapable way, it's necessary... if you do that... I don't know, buddy! You might have fun!

Or at least, I do! And that's why I'm here. So if you can imagine that experience, that's what I'm going through. That's why I made this page. That's my manifesto, take it or leave it.