I’ve been running my own Gemini capsule (web site) on my cheap DigitalOcean droplet for a few years.

For those who doesn’t know what Gemini is: is a minimal web protocol (think of HTTP). It serves pages containing gemtext (think of HTML) which is super minimal too. No CSS. No JS.

The whole vibe of it reminds me of the old web that I actually never been part of but romanticised it in my head enough to be in love with it.

I have been part of way purer web though.

• The Web without GDPR/Cookie popups.
• Search engines that were closer to grep which were surprisingly pleasant to use.
• The Web that loaded faster than anything is loading right now even though I was using crappy and slow internet connection.

Gemini idea made me feel warmth and I started to serve this blog in its space.

Recently I even made my own Gemini server.

I thought using and contributing to this protocol is going to make it more popular and maybe even change the “current web”.

And then something clicked in my brain and I realized that I just lie to myself.

• The problem with current web is not HTTP protocol. In fact HTTP protocol is amazing and relatively simple. It is quite flexible too.
• gemtext is kind of cool but HTML is even better. You still can find a browser or a browser extension that will stop loading JS and images if that’s your thing. Even pure HTML allows web creators to express themselves by styling their web sites.
• But the biggest lie is that I don’t use it. I like the idea. I do have a web site in Gemini space. But I don’t even open any ones capsule and read stuff. In the beginning I did but most if not all capsules have regular web (HTTP) versions available to which I often could just subscribe to with my RSS reader. Or open them in my browser which is configured with all the things I like (unlike Gemini browsers).

I’m going to shut down my capsule in Gemini space and continue living my life with HTTP. It gave me (and continuing giving) so much great stuff and the fact that it’s broken is sad and I should try to make it better place instead of dropping it because it changed.