This website is a project for Prof. Zimmerman's HIST 2001 seminar at the George Washington University! This website's author is Georgia. For confidentiality purposes, I will only cite relatively known Geocities and Neocities. If I reference a more obscure, private, or revealing Geocity, I will include information in a direct email to the professor to ensure she knows I'm not making stuff up while still protecting the privacy of those involved. I created many of this website's components, including the background. If I don't cite or credit a graphic, it is because I made it, so feel free to use it for whatever purpose! This site is hosted by Neocities.
Abstract:
I begin by citing Emmet Drager and Andrea Long Chu's definition of a Trans Satire to clarify my goals for this project. I continue by defining key terms. Next, I define a thesis statement: the ironic nature of transfeminine Neocities indicates a nostalgia for decentralized internet stemming from how the centralization of social media exposed trans women to harassment. We advance this by explaining how centralizing the internet hurt the transfeminine community, analyzing the differences between Neocities and Geocities, and arguing these differences indicate a nostalgia for the decentralized internet Geocities once represented. Finally, I further my argument with some autotheory, exploring my relationship with the subject and ending on a personal note.
Introduction:
In "After Trans Studies," Emmet Drager and Andrea Long Chu indict Transgender Studies for its "narrative problem:" "In trans studies, it seems to me [Drager] that we are telling a story of our victimhood (tragedy) or a story of our resistance (romance). I am much more interested in a satire, a genre about how truly disappointing and sometimes even boring it is to be a trans person in this world." With this project, I intend to make a transgender satire by demonstrating how the differences between Neocities and Geocities highlight the quirks of being a closeted trans teenager well into the 21st century. To do this, however, we must define some key terms:
Internet users type domains into the address bar to get to whatever website they seek to visit. For instance, this website's domain is transsatire.com.
However, for a website to be publicly visible, it requires a computer to run constantly with the sole purpose of letting visitors enter a website. This computer is called a server.
Often, companies will rent out servers, so website creators don't need to buy their own computers and keep them running all the time. The service of renting out servers for another's use is called web hosting.
HTML, an acronym for Hyper Text Markup Language, is the language web developers use to write up websites, separating their text into paragraphs, lists, and headings. I wrote this website from scratch using HTML!
CSS is an acronym for Cascading Style Sheets, the language web developers use to decorate their websites. Using CSS, I made this website have a blue and pink background, use the font Georgia, and keep these decisions consistent from page to page!
Geocities was a website that streamlined web design and web hosting for casual internet users. Rather than having to buy their own domains and pay for web hosting, Geocities allowed anyone with internet access to make a simple website under the Geocities domain and hosted by Geocities servers. Simple, easy-to-learn HTML was all anyone needed to make their very own website, and CSS was the only barrier between a bunch of text and a cohesive, pretty website. In 1999, Geocities was bought out by Yahoo. After falling out of fashion, Geocities was shut down in 2009. For brevity, I may refer to a user-made page on Geocities as a Geocity.
Geocities was split up into neighborhoods of websites with some common theme.
WestHollywood was a neighborhood in Geocities for LGBT-related websites. I will speak more about WestHollywood, but I want to mention that much of the archived content from WestHollywood was sexual in nature, since I will ignore this content in my analysis.
Neocities is a currently active website taking heavy inspiration from Geocities. It, too, offers HTML/CSS tutorials and free hosting to any casual internet user looking to try out web development. For brevity, I may refer to a user-made page on Neocities as a Neocity.
I call social media that prompts users to consume content they don't seek or connect with people that they don't search for centralized social media. Websites that implement a "for you" page such as TikTok or Twitter are centralized social media. Websites that prompt you to follow people you may know in real life, such as Facebook or Snapchat, are centralized. I call social media that is not "centralized" decentralized social media. Some prominent examples of decentralized social media are WhatsApp, Discord, MySpace, and Geocities.