Writing HTML is punk rock. A “platform” is the tool of the establishment.
And I’ve never seen anybody express what I was trying to say better than… this, stolen in almost its entirety:
Three chords and a domain name.
You don’t need a deal with a label. You don’t need a platform’s blessing. All you need is an out of tune guitar you can barely play, or a free text editor and a hosting bill. That’s it. That’s the whole scene.
I. We Are the DIY Kids
Punk didn’t wait for labels to say yes. It plugged in a blown out amp in someone’s basement and played anyway. Bad singer? Makes no difference. Three chords? You go. Own a drum kit but never had a lesson? You’re the drummer now.
The IndieWeb works the same way. Nobody’s waiting for permission to publish a website. You don’t need a “content strategy.” You don’t need a niche. You need a place that’s yours, and the nerve to hit publish.
Sometimes it’s ugly. It’s the wrong font. It’s a blog post about nothing at all. It works and it’s yours.
II. We Own the Masters Now
In the old days, the music industry owned the masters, the distribution, the airwaves. You made the music; they made the money and decided if anyone got to hear it.
Big platforms run the same racket. You write the posts, build the audience, generate the engagement, and they own the feed, the algorithm, and the right to bury you or boot you whenever it suits the shareholders.
Not here. Own your domain. Own your data. Own your identity. Your words live on infrastructure you control, not on borrowed servers that can evict you without notice.
III. No A&R, No Venture Capital, No Gatekeepers
No punk band was chasing a platinum record. Punk was about making music and getting it into people’s hands – that was the whole transaction.
No indie web builder is chasing Series A. We’re not optimizing for growth. We’re not selling your attention to advertisers. We charge a fair price for a real thing, if we even charge at all, and either way nobody’s pitching us to a boardroom.
Small. Sustainable. Answerable to no one but ourselves.
IV. The Zine Never Died, It Just Got a Domain
Punk had zines – cut, pasted, photocopied, and passed hand to hand because the real press wouldn’t cover it. That’s blogging before anyone even called it blogging.
We still do that. A blog is a zine with better uptime. An RSS feed is a mailing list that never asks for your email. Webmentions are show flyers stapled to telephone poles all over town, pointing back to each other, building the scene a link at a time.
Community over audience. Nobody in this room is just watching.
V. Make What You Need, Not What “Everyone” Needs
Stop designing for some hypothetical user that doesn’t exist. Build the thing that scratches your itch. Use it yourself – eat your own dog food. If you’re not depending on it, why would anyone else?
Do this enough, in the open, sharing your code and your notes and your half-finished ideas posted for all to see, and the rest of the scene will pick it up. That’s how it spreads: not top-down, but kid to kid, site to site.
VI. Weird Is a Feature
GeoCities had hideous backgrounds, animated GIFs, and a MIDI file that played on page load. It was ugly, but it was also alive in a way no template can ever be.
We’re not going for pixel-perfect. We’re not A/B testing a homepage. Have fun, or what’s the point? Keep the web weird. Keep it handmade. Keep the mohawks.
VII. It’s an All-Ages Show
Punk wasn’t always right about this. Each scene had its bouncers at the door and idiots in the pit. Bands worth remembering spent half their set shouting them back out – Rock Against Racism, Riot Grrrl, the Dead Kennedys writing a song to tell the Nazi punks exactly where to go. That wasn’t a side project. It was a full-time job.
So… Everybody gets a seat on the Indieweb. No matter your color, faith, gender, who you love, how your brain is wired, what your body can do, how old you are, where you were born, or which language you write in. Nobody at this door is taking a ticket.
No degree, no job title, no follower count, no years of experience, no permission from others who were on the scene first.
And if you’re already inside, hold the door open for others. Link to the new kids. Answer beginner questions without snark. Write the alt text, caption the video, keep it keyboard-reachable. A site nobody can use is a club with stairs at the doors and no accessibility ramp.
All are welcome on the Indieweb. It’s not a code of conduct bolted on after the fact. It’s the entire reason we’ve built our own places on the Web to begin with.
VIII. This Is the Counterculture Now
In the ’80s and ’90s, blasting Punk Rock was a way of telling the establishment where to stick it. Today, publishing on your own site instead of feeding the algorithm is the same middle finger, just a little quieter.
We opt out of the surveillance feed. We opt out of the engagement farm. We opt into a web made of small, stubborn, independent spaces that are loosely joined, built to last, and owned by those who make them.
We don’t need major platforms.
We have the Web, keyboards, tools, and community.
IndieWeb is Punk. Oi!
Is it time yet for me to go a step further and say this?
Stop fucking feeding the algorithms.
The Web belongs to humans. 🤘
Yeah, I think it’s time.
