Earlier this morning I was looking for inspiration to work on my personal website. I stumbled upon another web developer's blog and scrolled through until I saw something that struck me as.. strange. I was hooked immediately.
At the bottom of their About page, there was a small component that held a list of names that linked to other blogs, with "PREVIOUS" and "NEXT" buttons at the top.
It was titled "The Claw Webring".
Webrings were online communities designed to amplify a blog's SEO and shout out the author's friends and colleagues. Read more here
I clicked "JOIN". It led me here.
Mostly empty GitHub repo. Not a lot of detail. Okay, now I'm curious.
I went back and scrolled through the list and clicked a random name off the list, curious to see what was on the other side.
It led me to the personal website belonging to the author and developer that created https://codewithrockstar.com/, which I had no idea existed until now.
It's a coding language that also functions as a heavy metal song. Designed specifically to confuse recruiters who aren't familiar with the term "rockstar-dev".
From their website, FizzBuzz written in Rockstar:
Midnight takes your heart and your soul While your heart is as high as your soul Put your heart without your soul into your heart Give back your heart Desire is a lovestruck ladykiller My world is nothing Fire is ice Hate is water Until my world is Desire, Build my world up If Midnight taking my world, Fire is nothing and Midnight taking my world, Hate is nothing Shout "FizzBuzz!" Take it to the top If Midnight taking my world, Fire is nothing Shout "Fizz!" Take it to the top If Midnight taking my world, Hate is nothing Say "Buzz!" Take it to the top Whisper my world
Esoteric programming languages are very interesting. Someone had to sit down and create these tools, out of labors of love. Everyone knows about Brainf**k, a language designed to be almost completely human-unreadable, but it's cool to see new examples pop up.
As interesting as Rockstar is, the point of this story, as is the case with most journeys, is not where I ended up or what I found, but rather the journey itself.
I saw an interesting component. It had a list of links. I clicked a link. I was curious to see what existed out there. I found something cool.
This curiosity->exploration->discovery->share feedback loop doesn't seem to happen often on the internet anymore. But I stumbled across it today and I was very pleased to have found it. I felt like I got a glimpse into the lives of some interesting people. It was certainly more satisfying than clicking through people's Twitter or LinkedIn profiles.
Internet communities and fandoms were one of the most beautiful aspects of early Internet culture. They may have dated roots in SEO and closed-off internet communities, but I think we should bring webrings back. Let me know what you think.
Thanks for reading
-Austin
The lead image for this article was generated by HackerNoon's AI Image Generator via the prompt "the internet".