Hello and welcome to my website! I'm Tech E. Raccoon. The coolest Procyonidae on the internet! Cool thing about the internet: Nobody knows that you're a raccoon, unless you tell them. But it's okay. I trust you guys :). A little about me: I'm in my 20's, I like cartoons, music, animation, digital illustration, character creation, speed-core, happy-core, hardcore, jump-core/jump-style, gabber, Lapfox Trax (now Halley Labs), 90s EDM , 90s industrial, 80s synth-pop/synthwave, goth, gothic-ethereal, death-rock, folk music, CDs, VHS tapes, cassette tapes, vinyls, VCRs, CRT TVs, 2000s home computers, old technology, physical media in general, and most importantly: raccoons! Speaking of raccoons, Tech E. Raccoon is just an alias that I'm using while I build this website and learn how to code. It isn't what I actually go by online. Online, I go by and have gone by various different names. If the first part of my name sounds familiars, it's because it's based off of this cute little fella:
From the "Loonatics Unleashed" series.
Again, I have a deep, profound love of cartoons, animations and fictional characters.
I'm just now starting to learn how to code, so there isn't much I can offer on my website right now in terms of flashy-ness. It's rudimentary, I'll admit, but I quite like it. It's visually very 90s, I think. I've recently gotten into the whole idea of the Indie-Web, reclaiming the internet, decentralizing social media, etc. thanks to various factors. The thought was first planted in my head when I saw a Youtube video on it one day. It peaked my interest, so I watched a couple more. Eventually, videos on the topic just started naturally populating in my feed. I watched them all each time they came up. I was fascinated. I thought it was so cool how people could just carve out their own little spaces on the internet, just for themselves. No likes, no follows, no alerts, no promotional materials, and best of all: No A.I. Just something uniquely human. Something perfectly imperfect and full of quirks, charm and character. Something specific to the person who coded it. I wanted to be a part of it! I came to realize just how much I yeared for a decentralized web. A Meta-less web where you're in control of your own content, how it's displayed, and how people can interact with it. I yearned for a more human web. Here's a Youtube playlist someone made containing some videos on this topic which influenced me. I suggest opening it in a new tab and muting this one (unless you're on mobile. mobiles don't allow for music on sites to autoplay.) if you feel like watching them straight away. Or, you can open it in a new tab to watch later and continue reading my webpage :3!
Social media can be draining, overstimulating (in terms of just how much there is to consume), and overwhelming. Just overall too much, whilst offering very little (if that makes any sense). And so, I had this desire to learn how to code a website and carve out my own little niche on the internet, but no drive at all to actually do it. I thought It was something only smart people could do. It seemed so unattainable for someone like me. So far out of reach. I thought that the time for the Indie-Web had come and gone. I thought that we've moved past making garish websites, chock-fulla graphics and loud color schemes. We are on WEB 2.0 after all. Everything has to be sleek, modern, grey, cold, devoid of fun and personality because "That's the future" I guess. I thought that the world had moved past this and had instead traded it in for this. I thought I was too late and that everyone had already moved on from WEB 1.0 and the fun user-interfaces of the 90s and early 2000s as well as the whole additude of personalization and customizability when it came to using the Web (everybody's social media accounts all look the same. Same layouts with no room for indidual expression. A far cry from how customizable pages like MySpace and even YouTube used to be). Something happend, however. Something that woke me up to the realization that I wasn't the only person who felt this way. Not only were there people out there who felt the same way, they were are actually doing something about it. Building websites, creating reasources, writing internet manifestos like yesterweb.org. A whole new world that was unknown to me, full of internet and web enthusiest! This chance interaction gave me that little extra push I needed to start learning how to code and make my own website :D!
"What was this chance interaction?", you may be asking. Well, I made a friend! On my 3DS of all places! We met on StreetPass: Mii Plaza thanks to a homebrew application called NetPass (Thank you NetPass). Bear with me, this explination is neccesary if you have no idea what the last sentence was talking about: Basically, a long time ago (2011) there was a portable video game console called the Nintendo 3DS (oh my god I feel old having to explain this). On it, you could create an avatar that represented you. There was an application on this console called "StreetPass: Mii Plaza". Whenever two different 3DS consoles came within 90 feet of each other, the other person's avatar would appear in this application. In other words, if me and Jimmy passed by each other on the street and we both had our 3DS's turned on and closed, then I'd get Jimmy's avatar in my "plaza" and Jimmy would get my avatar in their's. This is called "streetpassing" or "getting a streetpass (tag)". You could play minigames using the other person's avatar and learn a little bit about the other person, like their hobby, if they prefer cats or dogs, etc. When you first meet them in your "plaza", they greet you with a personal message. Back in the day, you could get loads of streetpasses by just taking the console out with you. 13 years later, nobody is carrying thier 3DS's around with them anymore (they may not even have them anymore). A homebrew application called NetPass allows you to do this all digitally, now. Anyway, That's how I met my new friend. This new friend that I made had their Line ID in their personal greeting. I've rarely met another person who also uses Line (I'm American, Line is not as commonly used here as say, Discord, Telegram, WhatsApp, etc.) so I messaged them there and we got started talking. I told them how I had been wanting to make a website and they showed me their own personal site as well as shared a website with me to get started on learning HTML and such.
I strongly urge anybody who's reading this to go make their own website! Like, right now! It's something that's open and accessable to anybody. You don't even have to code everything from scratch. There's loads of free templets online, loads of free code online for you to copy and paste onto your website (just make sure that it's code that the writer has made for other's personal use. Don't steal people's code if you don't have their expressed permission/consent). You don't have to take a college course. You don't have to take a boot-camp. You don't have to have a degree to start building your own personal site online. I literally built this page and 3 other pages in like 2 days. Reclaim your FREEDOM! Make a space for yourself online the way YOU want! DECENTRALIZE NOW! BECOME A NETIZEN NOW! Post whatever interest YOU without fear of having your posts limited or your account suspended. You like hogs? BOOM! There's a website completely dedicated in it's entirety to NOTHING BUT HOGS! Isn't that neat? you won't find ANYTHING like it on social media or on the regular web. It's all here on the Indie-Web.
Check out webrings! Got a hobby or a particular interest? There's a webring for it, no matter how particular or bizarre! Like cuddling? BOOM! A webring for fans of cuddling and hug enthusiest. Are you from the Midwest? BOOM! A webring for people from the Midwest. There's even an Egg Lovers webring for you to find and connect with other egg fans, egg enthusiests and egg connoisseurs. No matter how strange and specific, if you like it, there's probably a webring about it that you to join. There are also more "normal" webrings. Like webrings for books, video games, fashion, music, programming, game development, fictional characters, pop-culture from different decades, fanfiction, fandoms, etc. Webrings are a cool and fun way to explore the web and find other awesome websites made by like-minded people you otherwise would never find on the regular web. Stuff that will never pop up with a google search. You never know what you may come across and that's what makes the internet great! It's what keeps it fresh and exciting! Become a part of this! It's so freeing! It's so refreshing! It gives you so much freedom and liberation that people who grew up on Web 2.0 never got to experience. Let's fight againts Dead Internet Theory, together! Let's breathe life back into the internet! You won't regret it :D! Currently, I'm not a part of any webrings. However, I do plan on joining some in the future (I want to spruce up my website a little more before applying to them). Keep a look out for a Webrings section that'll be adding on my site... Eventually :3c.
Here are some buttons you can add to your website if you'd like to share mine. Add it amongst your other buttons, your 'favorite websites' section, or wherever you please! Lets make exploring the web fun again by making websites and linking to one another's obscure and extremely nerdy websites! Let's rebuild the web :D !
