The case for a more interesting internet

1. The internet you know

Open your phone. Look at your home screen. Count the apps you use to access the internet. For most people in 2026, the number is somewhere between five and eight: a browser (maybe), a social media app (probably more than one), a messaging app, a video platform, a news aggregator, and maybe a shopping app.

That is the internet for most people. A handful of apps made by a handful of companies. You scroll through feeds that algorithms have assembled for you. You watch videos that recommendation engines have chosen. You read articles that someone else decided were trending. You interact with the internet, but you do not make anything on it.

This version of the internet works. It is convenient. It is entertaining. It gives you exactly what you want, or at least what the algorithm thinks you want, which is often the same thing. But it is also flat. It is predictable. It is the same five experiences, reshuffled, every single day.

And somewhere underneath it, the original internet, the weird, open, surprising one, is still running. It never stopped. People are still putting things on it. Strange things. Useful things. Beautiful things. Things that no algorithm would ever recommend because no algorithm was designed to find them.

This essay is about that internet. The one that most people have forgotten exists. The one that we think deserves more attention, more builders, and more small, weird websites.

How we got here

The internet was not always like this. In the early days, from the late 1990s through the mid-2000s, the web was a frontier. Everyone's website looked different because everyone made their own. GeoCities pages with animated GIFs and MIDI music. Blogs with sidebars full of links to other blogs. Forums where strangers argued about obscure topics with genuine passion. Web rings that connected sites on a theme. Personal homepages that listed someone's favorite books, their cat's name, and a guestbook.

It was ugly. It was chaotic. It was magnificent.

What happened next is well-documented but worth repeating: platforms arrived. Facebook gave everyone a profile page so they did not need to make their own website. Twitter gave everyone a microphone so they did not need a blog. YouTube gave everyone a channel so they did not need to figure out video hosting. Medium gave everyone a writing platform so they did not need to set up WordPress.

Each platform solved a real problem. Making a website is hard. Hosting video is expensive. Building an audience requires distribution. The platforms offered all of this for free, in exchange for your content, your data, and your attention.

The deal worked. Billions of people accepted it. And the open web, the one where you put your own things on your own domain, shrank. Not in absolute terms. There are more websites than ever. But as a share of where people spend their time, the open web is a rounding error compared to the platforms.

What we lost

When the web consolidated onto platforms, several things disappeared that we did not notice until they were gone:

• Visual diversity. Every Facebook profile looks the same. Every Twitter feed has the same layout. Every Medium article uses the same typography. The platforms optimized for consistency, which is good for usability but terrible for personality. The web used to look like a city. Now it looks like a mall.
• Ownership. When your content lives on a platform, you do not own it. You have a license to use it, which the platform can revoke at any time. Millions of people have lost years of writing, photos, and relationships when platforms shut down or changed their terms. If it is not on your domain, it is not yours.
• Discovery through exploration. Platforms serve content through algorithms. You do not discover things. Things are delivered to you. The old web required exploration. You followed links. You bookmarked sites. You stumbled onto things that nobody recommended. Algorithmic delivery is efficient but it kills serendipity.
• The permission to be small. On a platform, you are competing for attention with everyone else on the platform. A post that gets 12 likes feels like a failure because the feed is full of posts with 12,000. On your own website, 12 visitors is a success. Scale is relative. Platforms make everything feel inadequate.
• The joy of making. Building a website from scratch, even a bad one, is an act of creation. Writing a tweet is not the same. Posting a photo is not the same. The web gave everyone the ability to make something and put it into the world. Platforms turned everyone into content creators on someone else's stage.

2. The internet underneath

Here is the thing that does not get said enough: the open web never went away. It got quieter. It got overshadowed. But it kept growing, and the things being built on it are more interesting than ever.

Right now, in 2026, there are people building:

• Single-purpose tools that do one job perfectly. A color contrast checker. A regex tester. A font previewer. A timezone converter that actually works. These sites have no login, no paywall, no newsletter popup. They just do the thing.
• Personal websites that feel like visiting someone's living room. Portfolios with personality. Blogs that are not optimized for SEO. Pages that exist because someone had something to say and said it.
• Digital gardens where people tend their notes in public. Not finished articles. Not polished essays. Just evolving ideas, connected by links, growing over time. A beautiful rejection of the publish-or-perish pressure of platforms.
• Reference sites that organize knowledge better than Wikipedia for specific topics. A site that lists every internet protocol with plain-language explanations. A site that catalogs every HTTP status code with real-world examples. A dictionary for internet slang that is not buried under ads.
• Experiments that exist because someone was curious. Generative art. Interactive visualizations. Games that run in the browser. Weird things that do not fit into any category and do not need to.
• Archives that preserve the internet's history. Mirror sites, screenshot collections, link databases. People who care about digital preservation doing the work that institutions are too slow to do.

These projects share several traits: they are made by individuals or tiny teams, they run on custom domains, they do not require accounts, and they exist because someone cared enough to build them. They are the open web at its best.

Why you do not see them

If the open web is full of interesting things, why does it feel invisible? Three reasons:

First, distribution. Platforms have built-in distribution. When you post on Twitter, the platform shows it to people. When you publish on your own website, nobody sees it unless you actively share the link or someone finds it through search. The open web has a discovery problem, and it is a real one.

Second, expectations. People have been trained to expect content to come to them. The idea of actively browsing, following links, exploring directories, bookmarking sites, feels quaint. Why would you go looking for things when your feed delivers them? The answer is that the feed delivers the same kinds of things to everyone, while browsing takes you to places that only you would find interesting. But the feed is easier, and easier usually wins.

Third, visibility bias. Small websites do not show up in the discourse. They do not trend on social media. They do not get covered by tech blogs. Nobody writes a thinkpiece about a one-page tool that generates QR codes. But millions of people use these tools every month. They just use them quietly, without announcing it to anyone.

The new directories

Discovery is getting better, though. A new generation of curated directories and link collections has emerged to help people find interesting websites:

• Hacker News and Lobsters for technically interesting projects
• Product Hunt for new tools and launches (though it has become more commercial)
• Tiny websites newsletters and curated lists that spotlight small projects
• Reddit communities like r/InternetIsBeautiful and r/SideProject
• Personal blogrolls: people listing their favorite websites in their own blog sidebar, like the old web
• Indie web communities that promote personal websites and open web principles

None of these have the reach of an algorithm. But they have something better: taste. A curated list reflects someone's judgment about what is good. An algorithm reflects statistical patterns about what gets clicks. These are not the same thing, and the difference matters more than ever.

3. Why small websites matter

There is a case to be made that small websites are not just nice to have. They are essential to the health of the internet. Here is why.

They keep the web open

The open web is not a given. It is a technology that requires active maintenance. Every time someone puts a website on a domain instead of posting on a platform, they are reinforcing the principle that the internet belongs to everyone, not to a few companies. This is not a political statement. It is an architectural one. The web was designed to be decentralized. Small websites keep it that way.

When a platform shuts down (and they do: Google+, Vine, GeoCities, countless others), everything on it disappears. When a website on a custom domain goes away, the owner can migrate it, archive it, or hand it to someone else. The domain is an address that the owner controls. A platform profile is an address that someone else controls.

They solve real problems

The best small websites are tools that solve a specific problem better than anything else because they are focused. A tool that converts timezones does not need a social feed, an AI assistant, or a premium tier. It needs an input, a calculation, and an output. The simplicity is the feature.

Big companies cannot build these tools because they cannot justify the economics. A one-page timezone converter does not generate enough revenue to support a team, an office, and a marketing budget. But a single person can build it in a weekend and host it for free. The economics of small are different from the economics of big, and that difference produces things that the market would never create.

They preserve internet culture

The internet has a culture, and that culture lives on small websites. Niche communities, inside jokes, aesthetic movements, technical subcultures. These things do not thrive on platforms that optimize for mass appeal. They thrive in corners. On forums. On personal blogs. On weird little sites that only a few thousand people know about.

When we built aislop.day, we did not build it because we expected millions of visitors. We built it because AI slop, the weird, unexpected, often hilarious output of generative models, is a cultural phenomenon that deserves documentation. A platform would bury it in a feed. A website gives it a home.

They lower the barrier to creation

You do not need to be a professional developer to make a website. You need to know some HTML, which is not a programming language. It is a markup language that was specifically designed to be learnable by non-programmers. A basic website is a text file with angle brackets. That is it.

The more small websites exist, the more people see that making one is possible. Every personal homepage is an implicit invitation: "You could do this too." Platforms discourage this. Their message is: "You do not need your own website. We have already built everything you need." It is true, in the same way that you do not need your own kitchen because restaurants exist. But owning a kitchen changes your relationship with food. Owning a website changes your relationship with the internet.

They make the internet surprising again

The most underrated quality of the open web is surprise. When you follow a link to a website you have never visited, you do not know what you are going to get. The design might be unexpected. The content might be something you have never thought about. The experience might be unlike anything else on the internet.

Platforms cannot offer this. They are optimized for familiarity. Every Instagram post looks like every other Instagram post. Every TikTok follows the same format. Every LinkedIn article has the same performative tone. The platform's consistency is its strength for usability and its weakness for wonder.

Small websites bring wonder back. A website that explains internet protocols with hand-drawn diagrams. A dictionary for slang with a search bar and nothing else. A tool that tests your keyboard and shows you which keys are dead. These things are surprising because they are specific, personal, and unlike anything a platform would produce.

4. The economics of small

One of the most liberating realizations in building for the web is that small websites cost almost nothing to run. This changes everything about what is worth building.

The hosting math

A static website hosted on Cloudflare Pages, Netlify, or Vercel costs exactly zero dollars per month for most small projects. These platforms offer generous free tiers that handle millions of requests. The only cost is the domain, which is typically $10-20 per year.

Let that sink in. For the price of two coffees a year, you can put something on the internet that is available to every human with a browser. There has never been a cheaper way to reach a global audience. A billboard costs thousands. A TV ad costs millions. A website costs ten dollars.

This math means that a website does not need to make money to be worth building. It does not need to be a business. It does not need a revenue model. It does not need users in the traditional product sense. It just needs to exist and be useful to someone, even if that someone is only you.

The attention trap

The biggest mistake people make when thinking about small websites is applying platform thinking. On a platform, success is measured in followers, likes, views, and engagement. These metrics make sense for platforms because platforms monetize attention. More attention equals more ad revenue.

But a small website is not a platform. It does not monetize attention. It does not need engagement. It does not need to grow. A tool that helps 50 people a day convert timezones is a success. A reference that 200 developers bookmark is a success. A blog that 30 people read regularly is a success.

The freedom from growth metrics is one of the most valuable things about building on the open web. You can make something that serves a tiny audience perfectly, and that is enough. You do not need to scale. You do not need to pivot. You do not need to add features to retain users. You just need to keep the site running, which, for a static site, means paying the domain renewal once a year.

The compound effect

Here is what happens when you build small websites over time: they accumulate. Each one is a small thing. But together, they become a body of work. A portfolio. A collection. An identity.

Slop Brains started as one project. Then two. Then five. Now there are more than ten. Each project took a few days to build. But the collection took years. And the collection is more valuable than the sum of its parts because it tells a story: "This person builds things. They ship. They care about the internet."

That story opens doors. People reach out with collaboration ideas. Employers see a track record of shipping. Other builders are inspired to start their own collection. The compound effect of consistently building small things is surprisingly powerful.

The maintenance question

The most common objection to building lots of small websites is maintenance. "How do you keep ten websites updated?" The answer is simpler than people expect: you mostly do not.

A static website that does not depend on external APIs, does not use a database, and does not have user accounts has almost zero maintenance burden. The HTML does not expire. The CSS does not break. The JavaScript does not need security patches (because there are no dependencies to patch).

The only maintenance tasks are:

• Renewing the domain once a year (most registrars auto-renew)
• Occasionally updating content if the information has changed
• Fixing links if external sites go down (rare)
• Updating the copyright year (trivially automated)

We spend less than an hour a month on maintenance across all our projects combined. Compare that to maintaining a single complex web application with a backend, database, authentication system, and dependency tree. Small static sites are not just cheaper to build. They are orders of magnitude cheaper to maintain.

5. What "interesting" looks like

When we say we want a more interesting internet, what do we actually mean? Not every website needs to be experimental or weird. Some of the most interesting websites are straightforward tools that simply work well. Here are the categories of interesting we care about.

Useful and focused

A website that does one thing and does it well is interesting by default because it is so rare. Most websites try to do too many things. A tool that converts colors between formats does not need a blog, a community forum, or an AI chatbot. It needs an input field and an output field. The restraint itself is interesting.

Examples that inspire us: caniuse.com (browser compatibility tables), regex101.com (regex testing), Excalidraw (whiteboard drawing). Each one does a specific job better than anything else because it is focused entirely on that job.

Specific and opinionated

The internet has enough generic content. What it lacks is specificity. A website about "productivity" is boring. A website about "how to organize a physical notebook for software architecture decisions" is interesting. Specificity signals that someone actually cares about the topic, not that they are trying to capture search traffic.

Opinion makes things interesting too. A reference that just lists facts is useful. A reference that lists facts and explains why some approaches are better than others is useful and interesting. Having a point of view, even a controversial one, makes content worth reading.

Personal and human

The internet is increasingly written by machines (language models), for machines (search engines), to be consumed by machines (feed algorithms). The result is content that is technically correct, tonally neutral, and completely lifeless.

A website that sounds like a person made it, with opinions, humor, imperfections, and personality, stands out precisely because it is becoming rare. We are not arguing against AI tools (we use them). We are arguing that the output should feel human. Your website should sound like you, not like a language model that was asked to "write a blog post about web development."

Surprising and delightful

Some of the best websites we have seen are ones that made us say "I did not know you could do that in a browser." Interactive data visualizations. Generative art that runs in real time. Browser-based synthesizers. Physics simulations. These projects push the boundaries of what a website can be and remind us that the browser is one of the most capable application platforms ever built.

Delight does not require complexity. A subtle hover animation. A 404 page that is actually funny. A loading state that is beautiful instead of boring. These small touches signal care, and care is interesting.

Generous and open

The most interesting websites give more than they take. No login required. No email captured before you can see the content. No cookie banner that is larger than the content itself. No "create a free account to continue reading." Just the thing, available to everyone, no strings attached.

This is not a business strategy. It is an ethos. We believe the internet is better when things are open, and we build accordingly. Every Slop Brains project is free to use, requires no account, and collects no data. This limits our ability to monetize, which is fine because monetization was never the goal.

6. How to make the internet more interesting

If you have read this far, you probably agree with at least some of what we have said. So what can you actually do? Here is our practical list, ordered from easiest to hardest.

Use the open web

Bookmark websites. Use an RSS reader. Follow blogs. Visit sites directly instead of waiting for them to appear in a feed. The open web gets better when people use it, and it atrophies when people do not.

Start a bookmark folder called "Interesting" and add to it whenever you find a website that surprises or delights you. After a few months, that folder will be your own personal directory of the good internet.

Share links, not screenshots

When you find a good website, share the link, not a screenshot. Screenshots do not drive traffic. They do not help the creator. They do not let other people explore the site. A link is a gift to both the creator and the person you are sharing with.

Build something

You do not need permission. You do not need a computer science degree. You do not need a framework or a design tool or a marketing plan. You need:

1. A text editor (even Notepad)
2. A browser
3. A question, a problem, or a weird idea
4. A domain ($10-20/year)
5. A free hosting account (Cloudflare Pages, Netlify, etc.)

That is the entire barrier to entry. Write some HTML. Put it on a domain. You have added something to the internet. It does not matter if it is ugly. It does not matter if only three people see it. It exists, and that matters.

Support independent creators

If a small website or tool is useful to you, support the person who made it. Not necessarily with money (though that is nice). Share their work. Write about it. Send them an email telling them you use it. Independent creators operate in a vacuum of feedback. A single "this is useful, thank you" can keep someone building for another year.

Resist the platform default

When you have something to share, whether a thought, a project, a collection, or a reference, consider whether it belongs on a platform or on its own domain. Not everything needs a website. Quick thoughts belong on social media. Conversations belong in group chats. But if you are building something that you want to exist for more than a week, put it on a domain. Give it a permanent address. Make it yours.

Lower the bar for others

If you know how to make websites, teach someone who does not. Not in a formal course. Just sit with them, show them a basic HTML file, and let them change the text and see it appear in a browser. That moment, the moment when you change a line of code and see the result instantly, is magic. It is the moment that turns a consumer into a creator. The more people experience it, the more interesting the internet becomes.

7. The objections

We have had these conversations enough times to know the common pushback. Here are the objections we hear most, and our honest responses.

"Nobody will see it"

Probably true, at first. But "nobody will see it" is also true for your first tweet, your first YouTube video, and your first Instagram post. The difference is that a website on a custom domain has a longer lifespan than a social media post. It can be found through search. It can be shared years later. It accumulates value over time in a way that platform content does not.

Also: "nobody" is never actually nobody. If your website is useful, people will find it. We have projects that get thousands of visitors per month and we have never promoted them. People find them through search, through recommendations, through links in forum posts. The web is a patient medium. Good things get found eventually.

"I'm not a developer"

You do not need to be. HTML is not programming. It is markup. It is closer to writing a document than writing software. If you can write an email, you can write HTML. The learning curve for a basic page (headings, paragraphs, links, images) is about an hour.

If you want to go further, CSS and JavaScript are learnable too, but they are not required for a basic website. A plain HTML page with text content is a perfectly valid website. Some of the most interesting websites we have seen are text-heavy pages with minimal styling.

"It's not worth the effort"

That depends on why you are building. If you are building to make money, a small website is probably not the most efficient path. If you are building to learn, to create, to contribute to the internet, or just to have fun, the effort is absolutely worth it.

We have never regretted building a project. We have sometimes regretted the time we spent on features nobody wanted, but we have never regretted the act of shipping something. The process of building is valuable even if the outcome is modest.

"The open web is dead"

It is not. It is smaller than the platform web, and it is harder to find, but it is growing. Every year there are more personal websites, more indie tools, more open-source projects, more people choosing to put things on their own domains instead of someone else's platform.

The open web is not dead. It is just not loud. Loudness is a platform metric. The open web does not measure itself by attention. It measures itself by existence. And by that measure, it is thriving.

8. Our part

Slop Brains exists because we believe everything we have written in this essay. We build small websites because we think the internet needs more of them. We make them free and open because we think that is how the web should work. We keep building because stopping would feel like giving up on something important.

Our projects are not going to change the internet. We know that. A QR code generator and a slang dictionary and a meme site are not going to shift the balance of power between platforms and the open web. But they exist. They are on custom domains. They are free to use. They do not require an account. And every time someone uses one, they are using the open web, even if they do not think of it that way.

We think of ourselves as caretakers of a small corner of the internet. We tend our little garden of websites the way a writer tends their bookshelf or a musician tends their record collection. It is not about scale. It is about care.

What we are building next

We have a list of ideas that never stops growing. Some are tools. Some are references. Some are experiments. Some are things that do not have a category. We are not announcing any of them here because the best projects are the ones that surprise us too.

What we will say is this: we are going to keep building. One small website at a time. One domain at a time. One idea at a time. And we hope that by the time you finish reading this, you are thinking about building something too.

A closing thought

The internet is the largest, most accessible, most democratic medium for creation and distribution that has ever existed. Anyone can put anything on it, for almost no cost, and it will be available to everyone on Earth with a connection. That is a miracle. It is the kind of thing that previous generations could not have imagined.

And most of us use it to scroll through feeds.

We think we can do better. Not by rejecting platforms. They have their place. But by remembering that the web is bigger than the platforms. By building things and putting them on it. By making it weirder, more useful, more personal, and more interesting.

The internet does not need more content. It needs more websites.

"The internet is a better place with more small, weird websites."