making the internet an experience

digital graffiti, immersive worlds, and exploring vs consuming

by avalon, last edited 17.07.2026

in the 2000s, creating photo edits like these were - and still are, on this website! - a way to set a vibe + create an immersive experience online.

(and as an aside: whoever Denise was, her profile was dope)

there are little notes in the margins of this post so you might want to view on desktop!

i started a blog back in 2011, a bit after i turned 20!

(obv it was going to be a goth blog lol, in the fine tradition of my favourite alt bloggers of the early 2010s. i loved reading blogs by other girls into alt fashion and culture, and felt inspired to start one of my own).

(and plus, due to my upbringing, i’d never had the MySpace experience unlike the rest of my fellow millenials. so the idea of experimenting with digital expression was pretty exciting!)

…and then i actually struggled to blog lol.

and it’s not because i didn’t have anything to say. (i can talk a lot, that wasn’t the problem!)

it was because i didn’t have anywhere to put my digital graffiti.

i could have that term completely wrong, by the way. or have just pulled it out of my butt idk. but it’s a phrase that i think pretty accurately describes the silly little gifs, icons, memes, banners and other doodling-in-the-margins-type stuff that you used to be able to find everywhere on the old web!

digital graffiti was a way to express things about your personality and beliefs, or craft how you wanted to be seen or how you wanted to express yourself on any given day.

it was only after i tried blogging that i realised i didn’t just want walls of text interspersed with an occasional relevant image. i wanted to create a vibe, an experience. a way to blend shapes, images and text non-linearly and make my blog into something like online collage art.

aka digital graffiti.

…and that was probably why 2012-me didn’t last long as a blogger lol, despite (to my surprise, honestly) having followers who did enjoy my outfit posts and style deep-dives lol!

(i’d pop a screenshot here but not even the WayBack Machine has it saved!)

» i’m fairly sure this goth pixel doll came from an alt-girl site from before 2005. i honestly wouldn’t be surprised if it had been animated in Microsoft Paint (i can’t remember if you could make animations in Paint back then, but you could certainly make the frames by saving a bunch of Paint JPGs.)

maybe this one should feature in my gothic internet shrine - the solitary-girl-weeping-black-tears thing would definitely fit!

welp long story short, i gave blogging a crack a few more times. on Tumblr, and even my own WordPress.

and of course i did the the instagram content thing - but no matter how many times i tried, it just felt like being in a massive online high school with popularity contests and bullies and hierarchies instead of a place to be expressive.

i really wanted to do something creative on the internet - bc the internet really is the most magical thing - and i just couldn’t figure out why i didn’t really like posting on all the usual platforms.

and i think it’s that, as artist Kening Zhu says, apps (and i’ll add most website templates, too) allow you to create content, or to ‘post’.

but they don’t allow you to create experiences.

« i absolutely love that there’s a skull just popping out of this rose. why is the skull even there? why is it rising out of a flower inside a locket? lol who knows!

the kitschy-ness of the old web meant that stuff like this was common: themes of darkness and angst, blended with ornate beauty, and topped off with something mildly silly just because whoever made it was proud of being able to animate something. (and they should be!)

and ughhh this is a topic i could

chew people’s ears off all day on lol.

i’m sure i’ve already talked about this before and may talk about it many times. but the old web felt like a magical portal where you could visit all these worlds that felt like real, actual places.

the chaotic but enthusiastically applied backgrounds, fonts and images made every website feel like a different place. every blog had a distinct feel to it. every forum you went on had a vibe and ecosystem. every silly little personal site had personality and texture.

the web felt like an experience. every place you visited was immersive.

and blogging platforms, instagram, and other forms of social media have just never scratched that itch for me.

it’s difficult to verbalise, but for me content is distracting, but not immersive; made for consumption rather than exploration; producing for someone else’s marketplace rather than building your own digital castle; and it never seems to stay with you the way a real place online does.

a collection of 2000s web pages! inc. some myspace layouts, a favourite goth blog from back in the day, and my favourite LOTR website as a 16 yr old Tolkien geek lol.

every one of these has a distinct feel, texture, and personality. they all feel like real places to explore, rather than a ‘feed’ to consume.

» this cauldron gif is another one of those old internet relics that likely hearkens back to the 90s. i remember seeing either this or similar on goth sites in the early 2000s, as well as pagan/witchy places, and the occasional fantasy-themed website.

the amount of detail in it, considering that digital art was still very pixellated and in its infancy at the time, is pretty impressive.

it probably makes me a huge nerd to get so excited to find something so old still floating around the internet but oh well.

so yeah, i think that might explain a bit about why, in the end, a traditional blog or social media acct was not going to work for me - because what i wanted all this time was a website.

somewhere i could put all my digital graffiti, switch up the layout if i wanted, and constantly evolve how i express myself online.

and yeah, digital graffiti from the 2000s might seem silly or cringe (and plenty of it is lol). and yet - like knick-knacks on someone’s bookshelf or desk or bedside table - the silly stuff actually gives a place depth.

and depth is what makes visitors curious, and want to explore, and keep coming back.

websites just have this potential to be truly unique forms of digital art and expression. there’s just so much you can do with them to make them into interesting places!

and if that’s hard to believe, it’s probably because we’ve gotten so used to seeing every single website ever looking pretty much the same.

we’re used to modern websites being like static resumes or pamphlets, rather than immersive worlds.

it’s so interesting to me that part of the corporatisation of the internet was slolwy getting rid of human expression and fun online.

as if it’s not enough to just be yourself online.

as if there’s no point to self expression unless you’re performing it ‘correctly’.

that you have to chase audiences, and approval, and metrics, and that there are all these rules as to how you make yourself ‘marketable’.

and the weirdest thing is: i’m actually getting increasingly convinced that folks with businesses would probably sell more, and to the right people too, if their websites were expressive, interesting, immersive experiences.

the reason us millenials and elder gen Zs remember our fave websites from back in the day is because of that immersiveness - the places you visited were full of life and personality, and that made them memorable! and made you want to keep going back to visit them!

so there’s my little rant about the web as something you can experience and explore.

i will definitely be writing more about this topic in future! there’s so much i could say about it.

honestly if you haven’t thought of making a little website before, i highly recommend! it’s such a fun way of personalising your online expression. ^^

for myself, i kind of envision being part of a movement to deprioritise the social platforms and decentralise the internet. to put the power of expression and exploration back into our own hands. to find - and maybe even create - interesting little nooks online which turn out to be sprawling castles that folks love coming back to.