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.