One thought that struck me while crafting this piece: the history of the internet mirrors a lot of the patterns that I write about in communities.
The early internet was highly decentralized. Small groups formed around shared interests. Reputation was local. Trust was relational. Discovery happened through networks of people who knew one another.
As the web matured, many of those functions became centralized. Search engines replaced discovery through relationships. Social media replaced community-owned spaces. Algorithms replaced local judgment. Convenience increased, but a great deal of human texture disappeared in the mean time.
That’s one reason these new movements keep resurfacing. People are trying to recover something that feels familiar, even if they don’t have the language for it. They miss belonging. They miss having a corner of the internet that feels like theirs. They miss interacting with people rather than platforms.
In my work, I’m asking a similar question at a much larger scale:
If trust, reputation, contribution, and belonging are real forms of value, how do we make them visible again?
The IndieWeb asks that question about websites. KommunityKoin asks that question about communities. But the underlying challenge is remarkably similar.
I often say that culture, networks, and systems must work together. The early web had all three. The culture valued participation. The networks connected people. The systems were lightweight enough that communities could shape them. Perhaps that’s why so many people feel nostalgic for that era. They aren’t nostalgic for dial-up modems and blinking GIFs. They’re nostalgic for a time when the internet felt more human.
These three ideas (Indie Web, Boring Web, Web Rings) are related, but they come from slightly different reactions to the modern internet. In many ways, they’re all responses to the same feeling:
The internet got too big, too commercial, too algorithmic, and too impersonal.
People are looking for ways to make it feel human again.
The Indie Web
The IndieWeb is a movement focused on people owning their own online presence instead of renting space from giant platforms. The basic idea is simple: Own your domain. Own your content. Control your identity.
Instead of building your life entirely on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, X, or Substack, the IndieWeb encourages people to have their own website as their digital home. Social media becomes secondary. Your website becomes primary. The movement promotes ideas like:
- Publish on your own website first
- Cross-post elsewhere if you want
- Keep ownership of your writing, photos, and data
- Use open standards instead of closed platforms
- Build direct relationships rather than depending on algorithms
One of the IndieWeb slogans is: “Own your data.”
Another is: “Your content is yours.”
In many ways, my work already has strong IndieWeb characteristics. Such as:
- RiverStephens.org
- TheKoinBlog.com (RIVER Magazine)
- KommunityKoin.com
- Kula.today
- TheNamedGallery.com
- KommunityHub
Those are all assets I control. The IndieWeb crowd would generally view that as healthier than building everything exclusively inside Facebook or Medium.
The Boring Web
The Boring Web is less of a formal movement and more of a cultural reaction. People have become exhausted by:
- engagement algorithms
- outrage cycles
- influencers
- endless growth hacking
- attention harvesting
The Boring Web says: “What if websites just existed to be useful again?”
Imagine:
- personal blogs
- hobby websites
- photography sites
- local organizations
- essays
- gardening journals
- family histories
No optimization. No funnels. No personal branding. No “smash that like button.” Just people sharing things because they care about them. The Boring Web values:
- authenticity
- slowness
- depth
- craftsmanship
- personal expression
A lot of Boring Web advocates miss the internet of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Back then, websites often felt quirky and personal. You weren’t consuming content. You were visiting someone’s corner of the world.
Web Rings
Web rings are one of the oldest social technologies on the internet. Before Google became dominant, people found websites through links. A web ring was a group of related websites that linked to one another. For example:
- Photography Web Ring
- Science Fiction Web Ring
- Homesteading Web Ring
- Local History Web Ring
Each site would display a small badge: “Previous Site | Next Site | Random Site”
Visitors could travel around the ring discovering similar sites. Imagine a digital neighborhood. Instead of an algorithm deciding what you see, the community itself decides who belongs in the network. Web rings created:
- discovery
- trust
- community identity
- shared culture
They’re actually experiencing a small revival today among independent creators.
Why These Ideas Matter
What fascinates me is how closely these ideas overlap with my own work. The modern internet is largely a giant centralized system. A handful of platforms control:
- attention
- reputation
- visibility
- social connection
The IndieWeb, the Boring Web, and Web Rings are all attempts to distribute those functions back into communities. That sounds remarkably similar to what I often describe as moving from centralized systems toward distributed trust systems.
A web ring is essentially a trust network. The IndieWeb is ownership and local sovereignty. The Boring Web is culture built around meaning rather than engagement metrics.
Taken together, they represent a different vision of the internet:
Less platform – More community
Less algorithm – More relationship
Less audience – More neighbors
In some ways, what I’m exploring with KommunityKoin, and my broader Human Capital Economy and RE-Community initiatives, feels like these ideas extended beyond websites and applied to society itself.
The old web was a network of neighborhoods. The modern web became a network of shopping malls and carnival grifters.
I prefer neighborhoods. How about you?
