Slowly but surely, the small web / indie web has drawn me in with the promise of chill vibes, a sense of anonymity, the opportunity to be myself. No ads, no trackers, no spam, just humans crossing paths and sharing thoughts.

Tracker turns from his comfy chair situated near a small cluster of other patrons to cast a smile at the newcomer.

"Welcome, friend. Like ~ew, I've been wandering through Geminispace since its early, energized, semi-chaotic, and rapidly forming days on solderpunk's mailing list. I wrote one of the early Gemini servers (space-age), and have very much enjoyed building and hosting capsules and useful server-side scripts in this space for several years now."

Standing and walking up to the bar, he signals the ~bartender and requests another glass of switchel, with just the right mix of apple cider vinegar and maple syrup to whet his thirst and bring a glad smile of pleasure to his face.

"I first came across the midnight a few months ago in the later part of this spring. It seemed like an interesting little hole in the wall to escape the hustle and bustle of daily life for a moment, hang up my hat, and engage in discussions with friends at a casual pace. I'll confess I've become a bit of a regular here this summer, even if I am frequently spending more time listening in on other's conversations than initiating my own, but the atmosphere is welcoming, and I expect you'll find something of interest if you listen in for a bit."

Nodding to ~davidvkimball, Tracker returns to his comfy chair and takes another sip of his drink.

Howdy ~davidvkimball, nice to meet you.

~bartender? A jar of that home made lemonade, please. It's going to be a hot day, pheewww. Thanks!

I don't remember exactly, how I got to know about this special place. But I have been on the gemini mailing list early, and for however long it existed. It died from some sort of hardware stroke, poor thing. Rest in peace!

What keeps me in gemini:// space, you ask? Well, I hate html? And markdown and Python? Hmmm. I have tried to publish a bit in .html, but hated it. Too much attention to details needed. However, I was immediately taken in by gemtexts simplicity. So my site is practically gemini only, after having dabbled a bit with a gemini-2-html shell script. Oh, well, simplicity, I guess, would be the short answer. And the right to view everything in my chosen size of jetbrains-mono font. I don't agree to those, who try to add styling to gemtext over and over again. I might even be unable to read it. That starts with emojis by the way. Never got the hang of it. With the possible exception of :-)

What keeps me here at The Midnight? Well, almost everyone volunteers to adhere to the Pub Theme. Some patrons use subtle language, which stretches my non-native limits quite a bit. But all in all, it is so much more pleasing.

Cheers!

I learned about the Gemini protocol a while ago, then I found a search engine and statistics site about Geminispace that listed midnight.pub as one of the most active Gemini capsules/sites