The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

I don't think the old internet ever went away, instead the commercial internet exploded, in some ways good in some ways bad.

If you want to create and showcase your own stuff you have a ton more options than you used to, it could be nostalgic HTML pages with blinking colors or some slick thing on a prefab site builder, up to you.

In general I've begun to think of the whole small internet movement as a countrerculture phenomenon. It's got a lot of touching stones with the bohemians, the beats, the hippies, etc. What they've all got in common is a search for independence, authenticity and community.

I do think the retro-aesthetic is more of a statement than anything else. It's like the long hair of a hippie. Like there's no reason a hippie couldn't have a crew cut and think like a hippie and live like a hippie. Yet almost none of them did. For the same reason almost no small website has a bootstrap template.

> I don't think the old internet ever went away,

Most of it did. It was dropped from search engine indexes and died from starvation.

Eh, I'm with you on your general sentiment, and I definitely think websites can still embody the "old web" spirit while using HTML/CSS to stand out in a way that's different from "old web" aesthetics.

The problem with the Bootstrap example is that Bootstrap is exactly the kind of overly-bloated, JS-heavy (depending on use) Web 2.0 tool that the "old web" spirit is firmly against. A hippie can live like a hippie and still have a crew cut, but using Bootstrap on an "old web" website would be like a hippie heading to a board meeting wearing a polo and khakis bought brand new at Banana Republic as they yell, "Fuck the man!" from their sports car.

There is js-heavy pages in the independent web space as well. There are certainly some that wouldn't touch it with a 60 ft pole, but it's a very heterogenous group, and I wouldn't put it past someone to do it ironically, as an art project (like that random startup generator[1]). Which is really my point. The common denominator is independence, authenticity, community, not some particular aesthetic.

[1] http://tiffzhang.com/startup/