Kidpix, Patrick Bateman, And A Chat With The Melon King!

Hey! I’m ajazz - the ringleader of this little operation - and I’d like to gleefully welcome you to the first issue of FROM THE SUPERHIGHWAY.

I figure I should begin with a bit of background as to why I’m doing this in the first place. I’m a writer and web developer who, earlier this year, dived head first into the wondrous world of the indie web. If you want to know specifics about my experience doing so, I’ve written at length about it several times, but suffice to say, it’s been overwhelmingly positive so far. It’s been so positive, in fact, that I wanted a venue separate from my normal outlet that was specifically for sharing the things I find there with other people. Now, forty-ish hours of programming, writing, and interviewing later, I can finally share what I’ve found with you.

For the first few issues, I’ll be ironing out kinks of the structural and technical variety, so I very much appreciate you giving feedback if you have any. Without further ado, let’s start surfing together.

>: software used to be (and still can be) playful!

Several months ago, I was hanging out with some friends of mine who were reminiscing about introductory children’s drawing program KidPix. I had never heard of it, but a brief Wikipedia dive demonstrated to me that KidPix was - like a lot of children’s software of its time - aesthetically married to a more creative and playful vision of computing than most software is today.

With that in mind, I suppose it’s appropriate that I stumbled upon jsKidPix while sorting by random on Neocities only a few weeks after that fateful conversation. jsKidPix is a feature-complete version of KidPix 1.0. that works entirely in your browser. I was initially overwhelmed by its period-authentic user interface, and after accidentally placing a stamp in a random place, my feeble software developer brain was scanning around for an undo button so I could fix my “mistake” - before I realized that I was completely missing the point.

The point of KidPix is to place a bunch of stamps in random places, draw some swiggly lines, press save, and call it a day. I highly recommend you get in touch with your inner child by doing the same. I’ve linked the masterpiece I ended up creating here - if you make something that you think is cool or funny, feel free to send it my way, and I’ll try to include the best ones in the future issues.

>: let’s see paul allen’s website.

One of my favorite types of site on the indie web is the classical “fansite.” Usually part-wiki, part-blog, and occasionally part-discussion board, these sites are the evolutionary predecessor to the stan account or Tumblr fanblog, but you probably aren’t going to be surprised to hear that I hold these sites in much higher regard than their modern equivalents.

One such site is End Of The 1980s, which is a fansite dedicated to the writings of author Bret Easton Ellis. Though there’s information about all of Ellis’s novels, the clear focus and aesthetic inspiration of the site is American Psycho. The site’s aptly-named “goodies” page contains a wealth of links to behind-the-scenes material, further reading, and most impressively, a great deal of supplementary articles that provide context for the aforementioned goodies. There’s also the site’s attached forum, “Yale Club,” in which you can hang out with other BEE fans, theorize about his books, and share your business cards. Amazing stuff.

>: this month’s literature: the article that got me into this mess

Anyone who I’ve discussed the indie web with has heard me prattle on for ages about the article that sparked my interest in it - namely, CJ The X’s “What Is To Be Done: A Manifesto To Return to Web 1.5.”

I stumbled upon the article because I was already a fan of X and their video essays, and it is not a stretch to say that this article is singlehandedly responsible for the newsletter you’re currently reading. As I would come to learn, there are a great many indie web manifestos, many of them equally groundbreaking, eye-opening, and emotionally resonant as “What Is To Be Done” (and I look forward to sharing some of them with you in the coming issues), but since X’s piece is what got me started on this crusade, it’s only right that I share theirs with you first.

>: this month’s feature: an interview with the melonking!

If you - like me - begin your dive into the indie web on Neocities, it will not be long before you stumble upon the many works of the elusive Melonking. At time of writing, his personal site is #5 on Neocities’s “Most Followed” feed, and due to the sheer scale and scope of his creative endeavors (including but certainly not limited to the Melonland Forum and Wiki), his singular impact on the Neocities community and the indie web generally cannot be overstated.

It is not an exaggeration to say that you could literally spend days exploring Melonking’s website. It drives home the meaning of “Web 1.5,” in the sense that even in the golden age of the old web, even the most advanced independent websites did not have even a fraction of the visual density, interactivity, and scale of Melonking’s work. If you want to sell someone on the indie web, sit them down in front of melonking.net and walk away - within minutes they will probably have stumbled upon a part of the site that’s completely new to both of you.

Because he is such a good introduction for the indie web, I could think of no better inaugural interview for this newsletter than His Majesty himself - and he very generously took some time out of his day to answer my questions. I was surprised and intrigued by his perspective on creativity, technology, and the modern web - and I think you will be too.

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?: How did you develop the eclectic (but clearly very distinct) Melon aesthetic? What sources of inspiration did you draw from?

Melonking: That’s a bit like asking a rock how it developed its aesthetic! Its just being a rock!

As a comparison; You are asking me these questions, and I’m answering them because you asked ~ we are collaborating. In the same way; me and my site ask each other questions, and we answer each other with web design. Sometimes the site says “I want to spin!” and I say “Ok but that makes me sick so lets spin slowly”. If you’ve ever read His Dark Materials, its a little like the relationships between humans and their dæmons ~ they are spirits of each other.

As for inspirations, you can look everywhere! I’ve learned from 1960s magazines, geocities sites, byzantine churches, and old houses Iv lived in. I watch films, cheesy cartoons, I go to a lot of art galleries for ideas, and listening to music is a big one too! Often its less about directly finding a source to imitate, and more about feeling the mood that a piece of media creates, and trying to reconfigure that mood into a webpage. A few days ago, I was sitting on a train at sunset, and the way the light of the interior reflected on the window was so cool! I was sitting there thinking “wow my website would love to have a page like this”.

?: Are you ever in a position where you have to explain Melonking and / or Melonland to someone not familiar with the indie web? How do you explain it to them, and how do they usually react?

Melonking: It took me a long time to learn to respect myself and my own webcraft as a valid form of art. I used to say I made weird websites, however these days I take the time to describe myself as a net artist, and explain that I use web design as an artistic canvas, in the same way that a painter uses a physical canvas. 

My sites are both artworks and artistic resources ~ and I’m interested in creating a more human alternative to the corporate idea of what technology is, and what its role in our lives can be.

People are usually intrigued, and very open ~ the web is universal, everyone encounters it, and its flaws and joys are universal too. So I just try to inspire people to look at what they already know a little differently.

?: Across everything you’ve seen in the web revival space, what individual project has inspired you the most?

Melonking: My site has existed for about 8 years, and in that time, the world, and the things that defined me, have changed many times. Some projects that had big influences on me have been; cinni.net, sadgrl.online, lu.tiny-universes.net, kyledrake.com, art.teleportacia.org, emreed.net, ungual.digital ~ then there have been a lot of funky neocities that I just love like; w0rm-party, websitering, anlucas, emailmyheart, 2bit, dotmidi, beansandpenny (omg I could go on) ~ and many people on the MelonLand Forum have changed the way I think. Its a WEB after all, its not about individual threads, its about the picture that comes from connectivity.

?: What’s your take on the various new(-ish) alternative social media platforms (Mastodon, BlueSky, PI.FYI) - are they meaningfully different from the mainstream platforms they are trying to distinguish themselves from?

Melonking: “twitter” (the word) has its roots in the Romanic movement of the 1800s ~ the Romantic movement was a poetic counterculture, and a lot of its ideas were later adopted by counterculture movements in the 1960s ~ the web really grew out of 60s counterculture values; likewise, when social media was truly new; it was a counterculture. Social media in the 00s was unexpected and radical, and the name Twitter expressed that energy (even if it was unintentional). On the other hand, X, literally means “dead”. What died was the mythology and optimism that was still present in Twitter, even though it had long since lost its romance.

So while, it feels a lot like 2006 in terms of all the different social media options available today (and I like that!) Conceptually, most are little Twitters with a twist. ActivityPub is good, and its twenty years overdue; however I’d really like to see some genuinely new ideas emerge, because connected media can be so much more than short form text messages.

Frankly, for all its flaws, I think TikTok is still the most exciting social media site right now; I love how it pisses off everyone over the age of 20 ~ that’s usually the best indicator that something matters. Virtual world social media, like Zepeto, Line and Pokemon Go are also quietly big deals right now, and as phones seem to have become infinity powerful, the barrier to virtual worlds is slipping ever lower.

?: What do you think the next ten years have in store for the web?

Melonking: I think that what the average person wants out of their technology is stability, consistency, a sense of control, and a pinch of wonder.

Hand coding websites is really hard work, but it checks all those boxes, and that’s why many people are gravitating towards it as an escape from the buzzword of the week approach to technology that so many tech spaces are trapped in right now. However that’s not for everyone, so we are gonna have to invent other ways for people to incorporate those ideas into their everyday technology.

For better or worse, I think we will see a serious merging of the art world with the web, its been going on for a while and I’m not sure the art world will survive, but the web will!

For my part, I’m of the opinion that humans are dream engines, and we will always gravitate towards a story and a mysterious tomorrow. As rational as people like to think they are; ultimately the only creations that survive are things that actively embody our dreams and nightmares. The web is a storybook, it has always been one and it will continue to be one in ten years or a hundred years.