alt Hacker NewsHonestly, this feels like we're in the Geocities era again. Tons of people are making stuff again.
I'm excited by that.
And even LLM design tropes are better than seeing the same platform design on every page. The same Instagram, Reddit, X pages over and over and over forever. It's monotonous design. Platforms suck in more ways than that, though - you're forced into their constraints, algo bait, spam, hyper-drama, Reddit mods, contrarian view downvoting, etc.
It feels like we're entering the 90's - 2008 era again. The indie web. Microformats and self-distribution and hacking and remixing.
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This couldn't be further from the truth. The indie web was exciting because it was the product of distinct human voices. LLMs only speak in one voice (with subtle differences between the major models but similar "tells"). This is why so many people have such an immediate and visceral negative reaction to AI slop. It is distinctly lacking the human spark and it is uncanny and off-putting in that way.
Geocities had some nice websites back in its peak days.
LLM is just AI slop spam. To even want to compare it to geocities is weird. Have you been around back then actually?
To claim LLMs are similar to an independent web is also weird.
Interesting, as someone who started making sites on geocities I don't find this anything the same. I remember learning tons about weird little niche hobbies and making little learning sites and stuff with my own brand of weird Photoshop graphics.
An llm making the exact same layouts for everyone with obviously zero input from anyone who cares seems absolutely nothing like the old geocities days.