This reminds me the blog one would write around 2006. Not the text content, but the pixelated font and pictures of winamp wibe like that.
Myself, I am rather happily using mplayer - without any gui. Initially it was practicality of not leaking memory - like many gtk+ apps would do. Now, it is pure utility.
The blog one would write around 2006 is what we define as the 'alivenet'; and it's still there - https://vvesh.de