20221108-explorer.txt
I was browsing gopher today and I found a new hole of Cyber
Vanguard's[0]. Well, maybe not new, but anyway. The weird thing is,
even though it's one of two links in the Abandonware section of The
Gopher Lawn[1], it really feels like I wasn't directed to it, which
brings me to the title.

Gopher, unlike the modern WWW, is about exploring. You truly feel like
you're going to untouched land or old pyramids that were abandoned
centuries ago. You're going through trap doors or rotating walls while
the WWW folks are visiting the same places day after day and never
bothering to go off the beaten path. That's also my experience on the
WWW. There are a few semi-social sites I use, but I rarely stray far
away. The exploration now is the first few results on a search
engine's results page.

The old Web used to be a lot like this. You'd have a discussion board
with a link or just a regular site with a link to a cool short, tiny
video with lots of compression artifacts. Rememebr when Realplayer had
the best compression? Maybe it was on stupidvideos.com. Maybe it was
at Break. Maybe it was before the early 2000s when everything was
designed using pure HTML and maybe some Javascript or even Java
applets (remember those?). Maybe it was a Geocities site, a "webring"
on Angelfire, Lycos/Tripod, or Bravenet. Maybe it was just an image
because even downloading a small video took a while. Even though I
never used text browsers when they were somewhat "normal", I still
feel like I'm traveling to new and exciting places on Gopher, places
that aren't cyber tourist traps. Places that are homes instead of
theme parks. Places that not many people visit, which makes you that
much more special.

Gopher just makes you feel kind of cozy. Maybe it's the white text on
a black background that's doing it. Maybe it's the simplicity of Lynx
or just not having images and ads (I use uBlock Origin) shoved in your
face, but it's just nice. It's nice finding stuff because you found
it, not because some data mining company's AI directed you to it. I am
an explorer on Gopher. It's fun.

0. gopher://cyber.dabamos.de/1/
1. gopher://bitreich.org/1/lawn