honestly, I have to agree...

can't say i've ever written and hosted anything on Gemini, so maybe i'm not the best to comment. that being said: i host a website that is all plaintext. no fancy tables or images; the most technologically advanced formatting features are <code> tags and bullet points (both of which i would just denote with their markdown equivalents if Gemini or WWW clients didn't support them)

i think there's a very fine line that any creative type walks when pushing something out towards others. that line between writing for yourself and writing for an audience. as much as your criticisms of the content on Gemini (not Gemini itself, i'd argue) are valid, OP; sometimes it's not about you, or any other reader, surfer or consumer that finds their way onto a site. sometimes the content on a site is for the siteowner. sometimes it isn't. i have two resources pages that are for others as well as myself: i want people to be able to have a better experience through the stuff that i link, as well as highlight that someone else has made something - but pages like my blog are entirely for me. it's cool if you read it, it's even cooler if you comment! but that's for me, and me alone

the beauty of Gemini, to me, is that anyone can access it. easy to write something that loads and parses Gemtext, and a small enough protocol that it's not actively monitored by any agency that would use it to advertise, or worse: moderate it. soft as it is, search engines do this. but Gemini is so small that search engines don't matter. gemrings could take over and be the best way to find anything ever, with their pros and cons. the only reason i don't jump ship onto Gemini is because i still write for, and have stuff to share with, other people

as you said: to each their own

Protocols, servers, clients: all inert stuff.

When enough people become enchanted with a subset thereof, such subset becomes "a thing". And, oh boy, what a thing it becomes! Sometimes it even becomes everything! (for some, for a while)

I've tried html, html+css, html+css+javascript, then txt over http[s], then gopher and gemini, then none, then back to gemini.

None of the tech details seemed to matter at all. I either lucked into the attention of others when their attention was primed to be fascinated by my assemblage of verbiage such that they might feel compelled to respond/reply, or I didn't.

And whether any momentum in such lucky hits died immediately or went on for a season, well, no control over that, really.

I do think the Gemini sector of toolage has helped me slow down, helped me not castigate myself with unreasonable expectations of how that kind of luck works.

What I do know for sure is I've enjoyed reading this thread.

gemini://textmonger.pollux.casa/

Hey ~tffb, good to see you!

~bartender? A hot coffee with cream and sugar, please! Thanks!

You found this via my stuff? You actually reading this? Yay! I do have readers, well at least two. Nice.

One other aspect of this /bleakness/ is this: I for my part have tried to not fill the internet with private things about myself. I don't social-network online. I feel very sorry for all the little and not so little children out there, whose parents mindlessly post pictures of them at facebook et al. And then those same parents go up in flames when their children are approached? Well. But technology is complicated.

Way back there was an art project in the Netherlands iirc called "rob me" or something such. It scraped the "we are on vacation in XY" messages on twitter and offered the home addresses of those on vacation --- all just aggregated information. I didn't find anything about it on duckduckgo in one minute, but it must be there. There was another art project, where you could order coffee mugs with pictures of children/people from your neighborhood or elsewhere --- again just scraped of the net. I mean, yea, "don't do this" to the vendor of said coffee mugs is only one end of the story. It takes two to tango, as the saying goes.

But there I am, holding snide speeches to an imaginary audience, which doesn't even bother to listen. So I might as well just shut up.

Enjoy the bleakness!

---

Google found a mention, but not the original project

nk497 writes

"Developers looking to prove a point about the information people are sharing on social networking sites have unveiled a new tool called Please Rob Me. It hunts out tweets from people who are also using location-based services telling the world that they're out of town, and then directs the world to go rob their house. The creators of the site said: 'Don't get us wrong, we love the whole location-aware thing. The information is very interesting and can be used to create some pretty awesome applications. However, the way in which people are stimulated to participate in sharing this information is less awesome.' How long until the first actual robbery takes place?"

I personally really like the whole slightly ugly all-text style of it, though I do see how that's not for everyone. Though yeah, I think the author is right. If we could get gemini down to like 25% tech stuff, 75% anything else, that would be nice. I think gemini://gemini.cyberbot.space/smolzine/ is a good place to look for those more out-there gemini sites, if anyone is looking.

Though honestly, the large tech-bubble of it works well for me personally, since I don't really interact with tech people otherwise (except for my job, but there it's all silicon valley brain).

me too! i love gemini but it's just not going to launch, i think at least. i wish it would because it's a great idea but i think we're too far down the www hole lol