my experience with omg.lol

I started getting seriously interested in decentralization around the middle of 2025. I already knew the concept, but I had never really paid much attention to it.

That interest came from my search for handmade websites. I was looking for things that reminded me of the old CJB.net and GeoCities days, but not necessarily copies of them. I just wanted something that felt more natural and personal.

My searches started with old websites, then websites with an old-school aesthetic, and after a few hours I had collected hundreds of links. The more I explored, the more I fell in love with that world.

That’s when I decided to create Weirdnet. The idea was simple: I wanted a place to dump and organize links I found interesting. At the time, I didn’t know about services like Linkding or some of the structures I would later realize I was accidentally imitating. Looking back now, it feels like many of those ideas had already been solved by people who had thought about them before me.

Eventually, I came across omg.lol. I signed up, paid the small fee to support the server, and went to sleep.

For a while, I put the whole indie/small web idea aside and focused more on collecting random resources for other projects, especially things related to my obsession with ASCII.

Then I received an email through Weirdnet from someone asking me to add a few links there. I got excited and thought, “Wait, someone is actually seeing this.”

So I went back to looking for more communities and more websites. I found the tilde.town directory and was honestly surprised to see a living pubnix still active in 2025.

I went through the SSH application process, but never received an email back. Maybe it got lost, maybe they were busy, maybe it just didn’t happen. No hard feelings.

I still wanted to give it a try, so even though my english was rough, I saw that they had an IRC network and joined to chat a bit. The people there were very kind. Despite my extreme introversion, I tried to loosen up and participate. But something still didn’t quite click for me. It wasn’t because of them at all. They were genuinely nice. I just didn’t feel like I belonged there.

I was close to leaving that search aside and moving on to other corners of the web when, by chance, I came across an omg.lol profile again.

And for the second time, I was surprised to find such a large and alive ecosystem. Even better: I was already part of it, and I had almost forgotten.

So I took a breath and introduced myself in the IRC chat. I also thought it was amazing that people still use IRC today. The last time I had used it was probably around 2009.

One conversation led to another, and I felt something I hadn’t felt before. I felt happy and welcomed. Not that I hadn’t met kind people elsewhere, but this time it felt different. It felt like home.

Everyone was extremely kind and receptive.

So I decided to stay. And that says a lot, because online I’m basically a nomad. But I liked it there.

The person behind the ecosystem seems genuinely kind, the users are great, and everything feels built with care.

In the end, no matter where you choose to spend your time, choose the place where you feel comfortable. Choose the place where you feel surrounded by people you can relate to.

Always keep respect at the center of it. Be a good member of any society, whether offline or online.