Bringing Back the Weird
On the Disappearing Web of Enthusiasts
The internet used to be weird and wonderful. Personal websites were built out of pure passion, not profit. But somewhere along the way, the enthusiast spirit got buried under branding, analytics, and algorithms. It's time we bring it back.
July 2025
The weirdness of the enthusiast internet is still out there (art: Marin Balabanov).
There was a time when the internet felt like a giant, unruly collage - messy, personal, full of passion and quirks. Back then, people created websites not because they had to optimize conversions, attract VC funding, or grow a following - but simply because they loved something. A forgotten video game, a strange anime, an underrated band, a fictional character nobody else remembered. These were the kinds of pages you could stumble across in the middle of the night and feel like you had entered someone else's brain.
Recently, I came across an article titled HTML Hobbyist, and it hit me like a wave of nostalgia. The piece reflects on a kind of web that feels increasingly rare today: websites made just for fun, just because. Not polished. Not profitable. Not even particularly usable by modern standards. But real. Full of life. Full of humanity.
I realized how much I miss that web.
Enthusiast Creators
Nowadays, it often feels like every pixel online is part of some grand strategy: monetization, branding, virality. Social media has flattened expression into bite-sized algorithm-chum. And while there's no denying the power of modern tools and platforms, they often come at the cost of creativity and personal quirk. The unique corners of the internet that once felt alive with individual voice now seem overgrown, abandoned - or worse, replaced by SEO-optimized AI content.
But entuhsiast websites still matter.
They matter because they remind us that the web doesn't have to be a marketplace. It can be a garden, a scrapbook, a soapbox, or a shrine. They show us what happens when people share out of love, not out of hustle. They're often weird, deeply specific, and wildly unfashionable. And that's exactly what makes them beautiful.
When you land on one, you're not being tracked. You're not being sold anything. You're just peeking into someone's world. And sometimes, that's exactly the kind of connection we need.
There is, however, a great aversion these days to doing things that look a bit pointless on the surface, activities that aren't immediately profitable or shareable or scalable. But sometimes those are the most joyful kinds of work. Things you do simply because you're curious. Because you feel like it. Because the process itself brings you some kind of quiet satisfaction.
Greetings from Nowhere Land
I have to admit that this thought has crossed my mind more than once, particularly because I might have been low-key traumatized by the Beatles movie Yellow Submarine. There's a scene with the "Nowhere Man" who makes "nowhere plans for nobody." That stuck with me as a warning: don't waste time on things that lead nowhere. But now I think: so what if something looks like it leads nowhere? If you finish something you're passionate about and do it to the best of your abilities, you've already gone somewhere. You've learned something. And some of those things will lead you further, in ways you might not expect.
This is something that the early internet video pioneer (and later YouTube star) Ze Frank captured perfectly in his short video monologue called Brain Crack. In it, he explains how he tries to get his ideas out of his head and into the world as fast as possible. Not because he's afraid of running out of ideas - but because holding onto ideas too long is dangerous. He describes how, the longer you cherish an idea in your head without doing anything about it, the more perfect and magnificent it starts to seem. You start imagining that, when you finally make it, the world will applaud. And so you wait. And wait. Until the idea is too precious to actually touch. That's brain crack. And, as he says, it's the worst. Because you're not creating. You're not learning. You're just deluding yourself into thinking you're doing something.
Ze Frank's advice is simple and powerful: Make the thing. Even if it's not great. Especially if it's not great. Because the doing is what teaches you. And besides, the applause is never guaranteed - but the joy of finishing something is.
Listen to Nowhere Man on Youtube
There's a strong parallel between the enthusiast web and the DIY ethos of punk rock and the demoscene. Just like early punk bands picked up whatever instruments they had, recorded in garages, and made raw, unfiltered music because they had to express something, hobbyist website creators build pages out of pure creative impulse. Just like demosceners who don't care for hardware limitations or aesthetic sensibilities. They just program and show their work to people who understand it.
It's not about polish or mass appeal. It's about immediacy, authenticity, and doing it yourself with whatever tools are at hand. The punk and demoscene spirit said, "Don't wait for permission. Just make noise." The enthusiast web echoes that: "Don't wait for an audience. Just publish."
Small Successes
I certainly strive to keep that spirit alive with my own website, marincomics.com. Not everything on there is polished or "great," but every article was born out of genuine curiosity or passion. Often, I wrote simply because I felt like it.
One of my favorite examples is an article I wrote on a whim about a psychological drawing exercise known as the "tree test." I was sitting in a souvlakeria in Thessaloniki, musing about random memories, when I suddenly recalled the Baum test I had done during my military service. On impulse, I drew a tree, then dove into research to better understand the test and analyze my own sketch. I wrote about the whole process and published it without thinking much of it (you can find the article here. To my surprise, it turned out to be one of the most visited pages on my site. I don't actively track visitors, but Google Search Console showed me just how many people find that article through searches. That quiet, organic connection - one person's curiosity answering another's - is exactly what makes this kind of web so special.
Another time, I wrote an article about fantasy painter Boris Vallejo and his unexpected influence on the demoscene of the 1990s. I had stumbled on an old demoparty entry that mentioned how many people back then copied Valejo's artwork. That sparked a memory: I had liked his art too. So I went down the rabbit hole, revisited his work, and even tried replicating one of his paintings in reduced color using Procreate on my iPad. I published the article and posted it on Reddit. A few days later, I thought, "Why not share it on Hacker News too?" But someone had already beaten me to it... and it was gaining traction, with more than 400 upvotes. That kind of organic, grassroots attention for a totally niche topic felt like a tiny miracle.
Watch Ze Frank's Brain Crack on Youtube
The Shape of Weirdness
Reading HTML Hobbyist reminded me of the joy I get from doing things that don't need to prove their usefulness. It made me want to do more obscure stuff. The kind that might look like a dead end on paper, but actually leads to creative freedom.
For example, now that the new Marvel movie Fantastic Four: First Steps is out and the Silver Surfer is getting some attention again, I plan to return to a half-finished series of articles I had started years ago. They're about a strange, mostly forgotten run of the Silver Surfer comic from the 1980s. It's not high literature or even peak Marvel. It's just fun, weird, and obscure. And I love it!
We need more of that.
The web is still here. It's quieter, sure. But it's still ours to make weird again. So build something. Write that oddly specific article. Share your oddball passion project. Finish it. Publish it. Learn from it. You never know who might stumble upon it - and feel a little less alone.
And maybe, just maybe, doing something that "goes nowhere" is exactly the thing that takes you where you need to be.