Quietweb

May 17, 2025 [Life]

I’ve been thinking about the simplicity and purity of Web 1.0 for many years.

To me, it always felt like a place to organise thoughts, contribute freely, and spend quiet, reflective time online—which is what I loved about it as a kid.

As someone with multiple creative outlets, I’ve found it nearly impossible to present a cohesive picture of myself as an artist to the outside world. I’m sure some of my creative mates reading this can relate.

Lately, I’ve come to realise that a solid, homemade website offers exactly that possibility. It also has the added benefit of clarifying one’s relationship with the creative process itself.

Is the careful arrangement and presentation of our interests, practices and work perhaps a reliable path to deeper insight?

The monetisation and corporate takeover of the web have made it noisy, bloated, brittle, and frustrating to use.
Beyond the ethical concerns, we’ve also lost something more fundamental: functional purity.
(How many cookie prompts, logins, subscriptions, and ads have you clicked through today alone?)

Another great loss is the care, personality, and idiosyncrasy that peoples websites once held.

That’s why I’d like to propose a quiet revolution—the QuietWeb.

All it takes is a basic personal HTML site.

Let’s make the internet more interesting, more personal, and more functional again.

If you like the idea of a quieter internet, here’s a QuietWeb banner .gif you can add to the bottom of your page:

 <a href="https://hugh-vincent.com/blog.php?post_name=blog/17-05-25_[Life]_QuietWeb.html"> <img src="img/quietweb.gif" style="width: 64px;"> </a>