I love webrings.
I don't think I could ever put enough emphasis on that phrase. Webrings are just one of the best features of those cozy little weblogs you can find scattered on the World Wild Web.
In case you don't feel like checking out the page/website I linked (you should!), I'm putting this definition here: a weblog is Individual people writing about things that interest them in an approachable and unique manner that gives you a genuine glimpse into their lives and experiences.
I love exploring weblogs, reading all about the author, who they are, what their views are. It's so lovely, so intriguing. You feel connected to these people you'd never even dream of ever meeting ; the author of the website will never be someone you know. And yet, in that strange, kind of parasocial way that you can only get on the World Wide Web, you feel connected to them. You feel like you know them, without knowing them. They reveal themselves to you, to anyone really, but in a way that you feel is semi-personal. It's a really strange feeling, one that makes me feel connected to those people, one that makes me crave to read more. It's almost enough to make me feel like companies and their horrendous, lifeless websites don't exist.
And once you've seen all there is on the person's webpage, once you've explored it all, learned all you could, you still feel that need to explore. Thankfully, people who lived in the now bygone era of "many years ago" had invented a tool to "promote" other websites, while getting that same "promotion" in return : webrings. What's a webring, you may ask ? I have seen a really simple explanation mentioned quite a few times now, and I feel like it's my turn to write it here:
Imagine a circle of you and your friends, all holding hands, each one linking to the next and the previous friend. Now imagine instead of real people, the circle was made of websites : That's a webring.
While this definition holds true most of the time, it does not encompass all webrings. Some webrings really are a group of friends who want to link to each other, but some other webrings are more of a community. You're not friends with the people on the webring, not necessarily, but you want to belong to that group, because it reflects who you are, how you think, or anything really.
Honestly, it's kind of a niftier list-of-websites-you-should-check-out, but it feels way more fun. You click the button/link, you go to a brand new weblog, or a plain strange website, or a website where the author specifically made it so that it doesn't work on mobile (I'm reading on desktop anyway). I really want to repeat myself here, about how I love those little personal websites, but I won't for the sake of having a semi coherent page.
On the days where I've had time, I sometimes spent hours looking at websites, whether in clearnet or on i2p, following those webrings, checking out all the linked websites. It's, again, so lovely.
I'm planning on adding some links to interesting websites on this webthing (already bookmarking some websites), so stay tuned.
And do give exploring weblogs a try !
Side note
While "exploring", I tend to middle-click on links a lot (which creates a new tab without taking you to it), and that creates a lot of tabs. It's a very disorganised process, almost random, and using the default (on most browsers) tab experience would just be painful.
Thankfully I started using a web extension that adds vertical tabs, removed the "normal" tabs using some firefox css, and bam ! super efficient browsing. You should consider using such an extension, even if you don't feel like spending 3 hours on some randoes' websites.
The one I'm using is called Sidebery, which seems to work only on Firefox. TST is also nice. If you have a chrome-based browser (except for Edge?), you probably won't be able to customise your experience that much, you'll have to enjoy what the Companytm thinks you should enjoy.