Nostalgia is a hell of a drug. It’s a cozy place for me to go when everything else feels cold and dark. I look around my office and see the things I loved when I was younger — Transformers, video games, weird bits of pop culture merch… and they still make me smile.
But lately, I’ve found myself nostalgic for something less tangible… the early internet.
For me, the internet of the late ’90s and early 2000s felt like the Wild West. A place where anything was possible. Anyone could carve out their own little corner to talk about the things they were excited about. We weren’t creating with monetization in mind. We weren’t trying to go viral or become “internet famous.” We were just sharing… because we wanted to.
It felt alive.
If you could connect to the internet, you could create your own platform. If you wanted complete freedom, you could build a personal site or blog. Tons of people learned to code… or figured out whatever tools they needed… just to carve out a space of their own. A place to talk about whatever they wanted.
You didn’t need to be an expert or a professional. All you needed was an interest in something and the willingness to figure it out as you went. Sometimes you used pre-built platforms instead, but the goal was the same: to broadcast your thoughts to the world. Self-expression was the only real objective.
You put yourself out there and people would visit… or they wouldn’t. Most of the time, they didn’t, and you didn’t care. The act of creating was the exciting part. And if your site did find an audience, a small community would start to form naturally. No algorithms. Just people finding their way to you.
Sometime in the early 2010s, around the time social media really started to take off, I began to notice a shift. People were moving away from self-expression and community-building and toward something else entirely… attention.
Getting noticed became the goal. Any way you could. Clickbait headlines. Being the loudest person in the room. Crafting opinions not because you believed them, but because they were guaranteed to provoke a reaction. Instead of talking about the things we loved, it was all about “hot takes” designed to make you famous based on who you managed to piss off.
When I really think about it, that’s when the internet started to feel like a gross place to hang out. The fun of discovery faded. In its place came clout, attention, and monetization.
And I. Did. Not. Like. It.
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the role the early internet played in my life. It’s a strange kind of nostalgia, because even though I’m looking backward, the tools are all still here. The basic building blocks of the internet haven’t really changed.
There’s no reason I can’t try to bring back a little of that feeling I miss so much. That’s why I’m bringing SinisterRabbit back… to have my own tiny corner of the internet, one where I can surround myself with the things that bring me joy. Maybe I’ll make some connections along the way. Maybe I’ll find a small community of like-minded people.
And maybe the Wild West of the internet was never about the technology. Maybe it was a mentality. That’s how I’m choosing to approach this new chapter.