https://www.cynicusrex.com/file/web4.html

Web4 should run on LaTeX.

The World Wide Web is broken: it is dominated by a handful of
websites, nearly everything is financed by ads, bloated tech
needlessly slows down surfing, NFTs and blockchain are digital
cancer, et cetera. Stop it. Just stop it.

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How it once was.

Content over style.

Websites used to be fast. Needed information? You surfed, clicked
once or twice, and there you had plain text information instantly.
Just like opening a book at a certain page. No matter your PC's age,
it was good enough for the Web. The sometimes questionable,
tasteless, or funny looking designs imbued personality. Professional
sites were professional, enthusiast sites were explosively
enthusiastic. Except for downloading "large" files, surfing the web
was fast and felt like a digital adventure--a massive jungle
characterized by wildly disparate but thriving plants and organisms.

How it is now.

Social media.

In stark contrast to the former "digital biodiversity", nearly
everyone and everything resorts to bland social media pages; no
personality whatsoever, susceptible to the whims of Zuckerberg,
Dorsey, or other billionaire douchebags. Similarly, I hate that
nearly perfect videos on YouTube are forever tainted, nay, ruined
with sponsored messages and empty phrases such as: "like and
subscribe". People need to get financed somehow, but ads are not the
sustainable way. However, I can't blame the artists. For instance,
the work that Kurzgesagt [] delivers is legendary and absolutely
deserves to be seen by anyone. I just find it a sad state of affairs
that most artists are reliant on the whims of questionable for-profit
companies.

Bloat.

I'm tired of websites forcing the use of apps or accounts by
preventing the access to content. I'm tired of the ubiquitous ads and
tracking. I'm tired of websites choosing style over speed and
content. I'm tired of it all, but I cannot sleep. When I want to
configure my Internet provider's settings I do not care one bit how
fancy the website looks. I have one bookmarked URL to prevent
excessive navigating, yet it takes over ten seconds to completely
load all of the modules and redundant animation functionality; see
the video below. My goodness, all that fuss just to change something
trivial. Simply put everything in plain fucking text.

--Video: example of my Internet provider's customer service website
tardiness.

Reddit is another example of a website with terrible practices. Even
though it merely thrives on plagiarism and links to other websites,
on "older" devices it's performance is unreasonably slow. Up to the
point that running a 3D computer game on the very same device
performs noticeably better. Also, they are the ones forcing mobile
users into using an app by hiding content. Exactly the type of
behavior that gets me not to do things.

Games.

"It's time to kick ass and chew bubblegum, and I'm all outta gum." []

Alas, not even games are spared. Lootboxes, pre-orders, pay-to-win
microtransactions, the general dumbing down of everything. Just as
the Web, games are filled with redundant nonsense. Profit is the
bottom line and "gamers" keep falling for it, sustaining the
aforementioned practices. What used to be an escape from a money
obsessed reality is slowly catching up. Just like Instagram
celebrities: all looks and no substance. And no, beauty is not in the
eye of the beholder [].

--Video: If Quake was done today, by HansLollo.

Unreal Tournament 99, instagib playing emoticons.

What they want.

To make matters worse, "Web3's" vision is to commodify everything [].
Turn every article, every image, every in-game item into a commodity.
On behalf of everyone with a soul: fuck you, and fuck me three year
ago too. Possession, and thus greed is what's ruining humanity. Let's
not let this cancer spread.

"You scumbags. Quit putting a goddamn dollar sign on every fucking
thing on this planet." --Bill Hicks

--Stand-up comedy fragment: Revelations (1993), Bill Hicks on
marketing and advertising [].

How it should be.

Plain text standard.

Plain text as much as possible suffices for most websites; content
and speed over style. This especially applies to non-art related
websites, such as this one. I mainly want to communicate by text, so
I don't need fancy frameworks or be reliant on third parties. A
personal touch here and there is fine, as long as it remains
lightweight and self-sufficient.

With a LaTeX- or HTML-only approach websites will be aesthetically
pleasing by default by virtue of elegance through simplicity. I admit
that the title is sort of clickbait because LaTeX has nothing to do
with web development, however, the philosophy behind it is perfectly
applicable.

So, what is LaTeX?

"LaTeX is a document preparation system for high-quality typesetting.
It is most often used for medium-to-large technical or scientific
documents but it can be used for almost any form of publishing."

"LaTeX is not a word processor! Instead, LaTeX encourages authors not
to worry too much about the appearance of their documents but to
concentrate on getting the right content." []

And to quote LyX, an excellent document processor that uses LaTeX:

"LyX is for people who want their writing to look great, right out of
the box. No more endless tinkering with formatting details, "finger
painting" font attributes or futzing around with page boundaries. You
just write." []

This "just write" philosophy* should be incorporated into web
development. It is exactly why I leave as much as possible on
default. I am reluctant to learn anything beyond HTML and basic CSS
because I find it quite frustrating to design with different browsers
in mind; same code, different results. Moreover, there tend to be new
web technologies every other year, making previous tech outdated.
Your "knowledge" eventually becomes obsolete, a waste of time.
Instead, web development should be more like learning math: once you
learn how to solve a quadratic equation the method is universal and
the knowledge remains useful forever. Just as learning LaTeX has been
useful since 1984 []!

- - - - - -

* This approach, which comes down to not having to worry about food
and shelter, could be applied to everything in society by means of a
Universal Basic Income (UBI). I'm confident that most humans would be
more virtuous if they weren't pitted against one another for money so
much as capitalism has us do now.

Exceptions to the rule.

Take thrashermagazine.com for example. Since skateboarding's
predominant medium is video, and because skateboarding is highly
intertwined with art, a completely unique website is more than
fitting. What I also love about them is that they don't solely rely
on YouTube to host their videos, but made everything available on
their own website.

Another exemplar is lichess.org. Without a doubt the best and most
lightweight chess website, all while refusing to use ads and
trackers. Totally worth a lifetime donation. Nothing but prodigious
code and philosophy.

How to fix it?

Eat the rich.

--Image: Eat The Rich by Amii James []

All this being said, Reddit should copy Hacker News, Twitter should
oust Jack Dorsey, Facebook should die, and billionaires should pay
their goddamn taxes so we can implement Universal Basic Income. Doing
this will enable actual good people to do actual good and useful work
without having to rely on ads, difficult to come by donations,
blockchain pyramid Ponzi schemes, or bullshit jobs []. Let us "just
write" history.

--Angelino Desmet; 28 November 2021.



Sources.

 1. Duke Nukem 3D. [Originally from the movie They Live, but I like
    the Duke version better.]
 2. Alain De Botton: Beauty Is NOT in the Eyes of the Beholder - The
    School of Life.
 3. Wikipedia: Web3.
 4. Kurzgesagt - In a Nutshell.
 5. Bill Hicks: Bill Hicks - Revelations.
 6. The \(\LaTeX\) Project.
 7. LyX - The Document Processor.
 8. Wikipedia: LaTeX.
 9. Vox.com: Bullshit jobs: why they exist and why you might have one
    .
10. Amii James: Amii Illustrates - Eat The Rich.

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