_______
                               _,-'       `-
                intro         /             '.
                             :    ,......     ;
                2025-11-14    '.,' :    :', ,-'
                                '`-;    :-'`
                [ why gopher ]    /      \
                                 ;        ;
                                 \.______./
       
first off, gopher is ugly - and that's part of the charm. gopher is
old, in many ways outdated, and has a lot of unnecessary redundancy
(like various link types), but these are relics of gopher's history
more than anything that's relevant today. the price for the weird
format of gophermaps is complete control over the content files, as
they're just plain text files like this one.

another benefit of gopher's weirdness, is that it keeps it
appealing to those who are willing to look past it. silicon valley
will never care about gopher, since they'll look at RFC 1436 and
think it's bad on a technical level. the people who actually use
gopher use it despite the technical weirdness, since the community
and the content on gopher is used adjusting to it. gopher is a
self-sustaining underground, and cannot ever become mainstream
again, which I see as a strength of the protocol.

lastly, I often visit a gopherhole only to find an abandoned site,
a presence that was dead as soon as it began. maybe a single intro
post is available, maybe the inhabitant has written a few words
about themself. I echo cat's sentiment from 2019 concerning that:

> [...] so frequently these fair weather visitors bring nothing to
> Gopher for Gopher, often patting themselves on the back for
> mirroring their web presence or similar.[0]

I love finding gopherholes that someone clearly has cared for and
grown, so I hope I can to the same.

[0]: gopher://baud.baby/0/phlog/fs20190530.txt