dogspit - Manifesto?

Many sites involved in the web revival movement have a "manifesto", stating the creator's dissatisfaction with the modern, ad-ridden, dopamine-looping internet. I agree completely with what they say, modern internet sucks balls. But, not everything has to be a statement on the contemporary times, and, in my opinion, especially not your personal website!

One of my most destructive habits, that I work on breaking down every day, is that I always try to find the meaning in everything I do. "Why did I paint this? Why did I write this? What is it all pointing to?"

My most common reaction to finding a new skill or interest is imagining a documentary about my life, when I am famous for my dedication and creativity in this skill or interest, and I immediately think: "Finally, you found the thing you are meant to do the rest of your life." This immediatley puts my expectations on Mount Everest and slowly squeezes the joy out of the interest when I do not meet the expectations.

There is no rational logic to why I do like this, it just happens. I have watched so many documentaries about people who "found their thing", and I just assume this is what it is like for everyone who is happy, when in reality it is probably not like that. I am still only young, there is a lot of time for me to "find my thing".

ANYWAY, to combat this compulsion to force purpose out of everything I do, I will just tell some history about my web revival interest!

Beginnings

I first learned of the web revival movement from this Tumblr post. It writes about NeoCities and I became interested. I typed "neoctities" (yes, with typo) in the search bar and clicked on the first link. I navigated to the explore page and clicked on the site named "uncanny valley". I immediately felt that this would take up a big part of my life, wether I wanted it to or not.

There you can find my first ever guestbook message! It was written 28 of June, 2023: "hehe hoho". This was the beginning of madness.

KROKODIL

Of course, I immediately created a site on NeoCities and I finally made my first "little corner on the internet" as we all say. It is dated to 29 of June, 2023.

At first it was my internet name: dazhak.neocities.org, but when I realised what I wanted to name the site it was changed to krokodil.neocities.org. The website's name was to always be stylised as KROKODIL, for maximum coolness.

The Name

The name KROKODIL came from a half-cooked idea for a possible personal art-zine (which is kind of what this is, if you look at it abstractly enough).

For this zine, I was deciding between Zhack (from my internet name Dazhak, also because it sort of sounds like "Tjack", a Swedish slang word for amphetamine), Ell Ess De (a literal spelling of LSD how it is pronounced in Swedish) and Pulver (a Swedish word meaning "powder"). Then one night, when I was listening to my mostly Russian rave playlist while thinking of ideas, it all fit together in my mind.

Just as I was thinking of how my name suggestions are all weirdly related to both drugs and Swedish, the track "DOLBOEB" by Russian Village Boys came on. I love that track, so I got distracted and nodded along to the quick, fried beats. But this time I actually tried to listen to the lyrics, why not check how my Russian comprehension is doing? And one of the most repeated words was indeed "крокодил", or "krokodil".

"krokodil" in Russian slang refers to Desomorphine, a drug similar to heroin that can cause extreme skin ulcerations, infections, and gangrene from long term usage. It is many times stronger and more addictive than heroin and rots your skin and fat layers, making it look burnt and scaly like a crocodile, hence the street name "krokodil".

Since I have an uncontrollable hunger for knowledge about anything vaugely Eastern European, I had alredy researched the drug earlier and seen horrific pictures of the effects. (Here is an article without graphic pictures.)

It was like the perfect representation of me, my obsession with Eastern Europe and my interest in the morbid. It was a drug street name, and also the name of a badass animal, spelled the same in both Swedish and Russian. I had to name the website KROKODIL. I don't know why I used all caps but they look cool, and are mandatory when referring to it.

KROKODIL went through many different looks and layouts, but I generally separate them into three stages.

Stage 1: Swamp Layout

The first layout was orange and black and it was made using sadgrl's layout generator. I slowly learned HTML, searching by necessity.

The earliest ever screenshot of KROKODIL (above) and a slightly modified later version (below).

Every page had a different background, while the content boxes stayed the same. Not much happened during this time from what I remember, mostly collecting cool graphics I liked.

Stage 2: Void Layout

This stage took much inspiration from one of the first "homemade" websites I ever visited: fUSION Anomaly.

Features: Black backgrounds with blue text, red links and yellow details.

Stage 3: Angel Layout

This is where I became obsessed with CSS and making every page unique, and it is probably my favourite stage. Many decorative graphics and a blue ""Y2K""-ish aesthetic, but not else much in terms of contents...

dogspit?

Before dogspit.nekoweb.org, there was dogspit.neocities.org, that I worked on parallel to KROKODIL.

An "explanation" page, so people new what was going on. Completely against my current opinion that you don't have to explain shit to anyone...

There I experimented with making an artsy, abstract exploration website, with themes of christianity, homosexuality, shame and long winter darkness.

This is where I first found out about the "position" property, and used that to place images where I wanted them. I incorporated that into Stage 3 KROKODIL

A page showcasing a poem I wrote. I think it's of ok quality.

I had many ideas, but kept procrastinating back and forth between the sites. In the end, nothing ever came of dogspit.neocities.org.

Which is probably good, because I am not, nor have ever been, a christian. I have no religious trauma, especially none related to my homosexuality. It's not my story to tell.

The Name (again)

The name "dogspit" came from me seeing a watermark in a porn video for a site named "bulldogspit.com"!

I thought it sounded cool enough by itself, but I removed the "bull" part so that noone would confuse me for the actual porn site (studio?).

I think the name really fits my general vibe of weird sexuality and maybe-otherkin-but-I-don't-really-know dog identity.

I also know that there is a band named dogspit, but we can co-exist!

dogspit!

Now we get to the good part! dogspit.nekoweb.org was created on 24 of March, 2024. I had become overwhelmed with KROKODIL's different layouts, and I made this to start over with a clean slate. And I decided to keep it clean.

Clean slate

At first, dogspit was even more minimalistic than it is now. It was also in by default in Swedish! An English version exsisted, but it was never up to date.

The homepage, basically the same as the neocities "explain" page.

I had gotten into graffiti pretty much exactly at the same I made this site, so this was supposed to be the link I'd put on stickers, posters and similar stuff. My fun, secretive website, where people could find out just enough about ~the elusive dogspit~ and what I do.

A list of writers I admire.

I had a small case of delusions of grandeur, of course, but this is one of the reasons I kept it so empty. The more anonymous the better. It is also the reason it was in Swedish. It felt pretentious for a swede to write about himself in English to other swedes...

Looking back

I am a maximalist at heart, and when I think back on KROKODIL's graphics and unique layouts, I often sigh dreamily and wish I would implement some of that creativity here on dogspit, but I know I would get overwhelmed again. I am simply too creative.

Whenever there is ANY opportunity for me to be creative, I WILL. And I WILL let it consume me until it is the only thing left in the project. Now, I love websites where the layouts are the main attraction, but I have other stuff I want to do too!

So by sort of ""forcing"" myself to keep the website simple, I can't procrastinate on writing stuff by working on new layouts all the time.

Also, despite being a maximalist, I find a certain charm in the simple, preset HTML. You don't see it very often, and I find it makes you take the website very seriously. Your brain connects plain HTML with error screens and not_found pages. It's raw website, digital organs and blue blood on your screen.

Plus: Stage 3 KROKODIL had the general color scheme of blue and black, so the default HTML blue and white was not such big of a change. I really like blue.

Index

Manifesto? (WIP)