The internet is experiencing a kind of mass extinction. Not of species, but of formats. Guestbooks, webrings, blogrolls, hit counters, under-construction GIFs, tiled backgrounds, personal manifestos on someone’s homepage about their cat.
These weren’t just aesthetic choices. They were declarations of identity. A GeoCities page in the EnchantedForest neighborhood told you something about the person who made it. A webring membership was a public affiliation with a community of interest.
Now we have profiles. Profiles are containers. They hold content that is optimized for engagement metrics. They don’t tell you who someone is — they tell you what the algorithm thinks will keep you scrolling.