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I love the idea of Gopher (even more so of Gemini), but the basic hurdle I run into is content. It feels like half of it is talking about how great gopher/gemini is, and the other half are deeply personal blogs. While the technology reflects the early days of the Internet, the content reflects the early days of blogging and social media (which came later). Rather than talking about things they are passionate about, they are talking about themselves.
I've become stuck in a strange metaphor regarding this: Gopher, Gemini etc are like an indicator of "biodiversity". Like a species living happily inside a small, even tiny ecological niche, having discovered that they don't really need much more.

Small protocols don't (?) disturb the mainstream internet in any meaningful way, but they simply deserve an opportunity to "be". They'll never be "big" these days (or, maybe in the scifi-scenario of complete societal collapse?). The content might, indeed, be a from-geek-to-geek thing these days, but they're a lovely sign of cultural richness, different thinking patterns etc.

That's one big issue, but I feel like the even bigger one is that neither of them fixes what's wrong with HTTP: Publishing is not a first-class citizen on the net.

As long as you need to rent servers and domain names all those alternatives are a waste of time, as they are just repeating all the missteps from HTTP. We need an alternative where you can type some text, hit publish and have it appear on the net with zero friction and in a way that isn't tied to a single third party. Publishing a site needs to be as easy as browsing one.

So far Nostr it's the only thing that gets close at the protocol level, but still lacks a good client.

What about https://neocities.org/? It's fairly straightforward and gives you the full power of HTML and a free subdomain.

I think the barrier is much more a matter of awareness of how web sites can be created than actual technical limitations.

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I usually check in on gemini://antenna.michaelnordmeyer.com/ and think the content is a bit broader than you suggest. Recent posts cover topics like OpenBSD, Disney movies, Arch Linux, UK local radio, socks, books, and so on. Yes, there are a number of posts about Gemini, too, but it's a minority.
I feel the same about Gander (the Canadian Bluesky-compatible startup). The only content on it is people talking about how it's not Twitter. One of my top three beefs with it.
I think these projects focus way too much on platform building than content acquisition. The valuable platform is the one where the content is, whether that's celebrity feeds or professional networking. It doesn't matter how technically good your platform is if there's no casual reason to visit.
The early years of BlueSky were people talking about how it’s not Twitter.

People stick to a social network, and when they move is because they have big complaints about their previous home. If they didn’t, they would never have moved at all.

That’s probably the biggest lesson of the Web 2.0 era that everybody that tried to create a new social network had to learn.

What are you missing? Just write a bot that pulls interesting content into gopher, and start filling it. Since the protocol is so easy, nothing could be easier.
I am not looking for particular content, just for something that is interesting to read. Typically, that falls into the realm of things that people are passionate about. It may be a project. It may be an issue. It may be something they research in their spare time. It may be silly, or it may be serious.

While extolling the virtues of the protocol may fit in that, it gets excessive. Blogs that border on diaries strike me as too personal.

It's not that I'm looking for something on the scale or scope of the web. People have already written bots that pull over interesting content anyhow. What I am looking for is an environment that I'm comfortable with participating in.

gopher://sdf.org and gopher://magical.fish have far more than retro-onanism.
Maybe they are passionate about themselves??
The content split is what keeps me from staying. Once you leave the two or three hosts everyone names, it is hard to tell a technical phlog from another post about the protocol itself. Do you keep a short list of non-meta phlogs, or is it mostly hopping between known hosts?