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Portrait of the Man as a...

The Indie Web and Other Uncanny Digital Reminders of What Was

I moved to Bear recently and, in doing so, I cracked open a rift. I fell into the Indie Web like a drunk stumbling into the backroom of the library where the RSS feeds pulse with a heartbeat you can't unhear. I kinda knew it existed. Like how you know something watches from the edge of the woods. I’d always been aware of shadowy corners of the web where thinkers dwell, where the words are strange and raw and not sanded down by the smooth, corporate hands of Meta or Alphabet. Places where you commune, not consume.

Before Bear, I’d taken refuge in Blot.im—a quiet, weird monastery of digital scribes who behave as though the commercialization of the internet was merely a bad dream we all woke up from. A place where markdown is sacred script, and each blog is a tower jutting from the black ocean of digital noise. It did not let me in the way Bear does, shining a light on cultists scratching out arcana on the backs of street signs. It didn't beckon you in the way the Discovery feed does.

Now, I find myself among familiar sigils—tags, webrings, hand-rolled RSS feeds—and the people who tend to them like ancient keepers of the flame. It's not content. It's not blogging. It's something older. Stranger. More true. Here are a few of the sites I've uncovered in my travails—portals in the labyrinth of the modern net. Some large, some small. All humming with occult frequencies.


1. Rhoneisms by Patrick Rhone

Patrick is a digital loremaster—an archivist of thought who seems to dwell half in this world and half in an older one. I first encountered him through Minimal Mac and Enough, a podcast that now feels like a cryptic cassette tape left playing in an abandoned cabin. His essays? Insightful. Funny. Full of quiet power.

2. Ellane W by Ellane W

Discovered her through a wandering click, and now I’m mentally branded with the sigil of One Big Text File—a method of note-taking so monolithic and intimidating it feels like it was pulled from a 13th century fever dream. It’s brilliant. It’s madness. I will never do it. But I cannot stop thinking about it.

3. Ava’s Space by Ava

If you’ve been on Bear’s Discover feed, you’ve seen Ava. She’s like a ghost that leaves poems in your coat pocket. Her writing appears often like a helpful spirit. Always thoughtful. Often vulnerable. Occasionally uncanny. Her blog is like a lighthouse powered by vibes.

4. The HTML Review

This one felt like finding a grimoire bound in soft leather and semantic markup. It is beautiful. It is accessible. It makes me feel like yes, the web can still have meaning. If you’ve ever worked in accessibility and nearly gone mad trying to get a heading structure right, this site will make you weep with joy and dread.

5. Jim Nielsen by Jim Nielsen

Tech blogs are usually sterile temples to the god of Ad Revenue. Not Jim’s. His is a clean, well-lit place—an observatory, not a megachurch. He dissects the web like a benevolent necromancer, pulling apart bones and showing you how the marrow sings.

Too, I’ve taken to wandering. I drift through the haunted ruins of NeoCities—a place where GIFs never died and the HTML is held together more by hope than design. I walk the loops of IndieWeb Rings, clicking deeper into a maze of personal spaces and cryptic homepages where the authors often feel more like warlocks than bloggers.

There’s a kind of discovery in this. An eerie joy I haven’t felt in years. I thought the internet was dead—just a hollow cathedral echoing with the ghosts of childhood, where the altar was replaced by an ad for AI toothbrushes.

But no. There’s still magic. Still wonder. You just have to stop looking for content, and start listening for the whispers.


#indie web #link post