Posted on: 9.18.25 // Tagged: personal
I suppose I should introduce myself. I’m Cora. I’m 30+ years old, and I miss the old internet.
I jumped on the blogging bandwagon as a teen in the early 2000s and bounced from platform to platform—Blogger, Wordpress, Xanga. I picked up bits of HTML and CSS knowledge along the way, eager to make my blog feel unique to me and all my precious thoughts.
In my final years of high school, I got my first domain name and learned how to navigate webhosts and content management systems. I joined a blog ring and made internet friends across the pond. I remember them clearly. One was a girl my age, perhaps a little older, who lived in Canada. She played violin and often shared her struggles of high academic expectations from her parents. Another was a young woman in the Netherlands, whose life I found particularly exotic, with snapshots of her and her boyfriend in various European cities. These weren’t intimate friendships, mind you, but they were important to me. Seeing little snippets of others’ lives somehow made me feel like I belonged to a global neighborhood.
But you know how that’s changed over time. Social networks that were originally meant to connect us have become mills for content, alluring and addictive, monetizing your time and attention. Sharing your life for the sake of sharing your life is unheard of. Having a public social media account means you’re a content creator, a business owner, a public figure, an expert, or an influencer. But I’m not interested in connecting with folks in that way. I miss making friends.
So, yeah. That’s why I’m here. I was thrilled to discover NeoCities and the genuine humanness of it all. I love the wild layouts and the niche content and the peculiar art and writing. I love the broken links and the works in progress. When I browse everyone’s sites, I’m charmed by all your creativity and personality. I’m happy to be a part of it. I hope this post is the first among many.