as much as i feel neocities strays too far into nostalgia and a view of 90s webpages that collapses into a very particular type of aesthetic, one part is undeniable: people actually care about their sites, and in particular the making of them, seeing them as something more than something they can put on their resume or use to advertise themselves.
the personal sites i miss were always idiosyncratic, made by one particular person, and almost never just about them. you'd see pages devoted to favourite video games, pictures of trips to asia, links to interesting pages around the web. and every page was different. style and recommendations hadn't yet collapsed into the same set seemingly used everywhere today, and people were writing html directly, not markdown in some static site generator.
just to say, i want a return of the personal website, but only in one very specific way: i want to see the sites that people want, and need, to make, rather than the ones they think they should. i want pages made by and for people, free of seo bullshit. lately i've been seeing more and more people get off twitter, i've seen longtime fb friends posting their bluesky handles or just deleting entirely, and i can't help but hope; maybe; maybe...