The internet can feel like it's built for speed.
You join a new service and you're presented with a feed. The name tells you all you need to know. The feed is the actor. You are the thing that is acted upon. You don't control the feed. Your role is
Adding my voice to the chorus of "this is how I feel" because, well, it encapsulates exactly how I feel. Author's personnal website is now in my RSS reader under a new category: Slow Web.
If anyone has suggestions for more website to add to that category they're more than welcomed.
I think this is the first time I found a reasonable take on "how to fix the internet". You can't fix the corpo web. Most people just want constant updates and they don't care about ads, bots and AI slop. You can't change their minds.
Saying "fuck it, I will just build my own thing and I don't care if anyone will see it" is the right approach. Couple of times I was thinking about creating some guides (like guide to public EV chargers in Spain) and I just gave up because I realized I'm not going to win the SEO war and no one is going to view it. Why write guides if they are not helping anyone? I'm still not sure if it makes sense to create guides but it may be a good idea to create a simple site, post some photos, share a story. I will probably do it.
I think I wrote this. This is my philosophy for how the web should be. Social media shouldn’t be the main Highway of the web. And the internet should be more of a place to visit, not an always there presence.
One of the things I miss about web rings and recommended links is it's people who are passionate about a thing saying here are other folks worth reading about this. Google is a piss poor substitute for the recommendations of people you like to read.
Only problem with slow web is people write what they are working on, they aren't trying to exhaustively create "content". By which I mean, they aren't going to have every answer to every question. You read what's there, you don't go searching for what you want to read.
Something that I have enjoyed recently are blogs by academics, which often have a list of other blogs that they follow. Additionally, in their individual posts, there is often a sense of them being a part of a wider conversation, due to linking to other blogs that have recently discussed an idea.
I agree that the small/slow web stuff is more useful for serendipitous discovery rather than searching for answers for particular queries (though I don't consider that a problem with the small/slow web per se, rather with the poor ability to search for non-slop content on the modern web)