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|                                                                      |
|  TITLE: Why I Like Gopher                                            |
|                                                                      |
|  DATE: May 11, 2025                                                  |
|                                                                      |
|  AUTHOR: grump@seogrump.com                                          |
|                                                                      |
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One of the things I've noticed when poking around on gopher is that
when people start phlogs, one of the first posts is almost always a
"Why I Love Gopher" sort of manifesto -- and although it's hardly
unique, I'm about to do the same thing. Why not? My explorations of
gopher have been fun in a way that the web hasn't been for me in years.

Were you around during the early days of the web? If so, do you remember
how exciting it was just to see what was out there? That thrill seems
basically nonexistent on the web these days. There's surprisingly
little variety on search results pages because the results are always
skewed in favor of big brands. There's also very little content posted
anywhere without some kind of monetary angle.

I miss the time when searching the web or browsing a directory like 
Yahoo would reveal a new site that I'd never heard of before. Today, 
we're always being force-fed content from a relatively small group of 
major publishers (Wikipedia excepted; I love that site).

With gopher, the thrill of exploration and discovery is always available 
to you. Hundreds of gopherholes stuffed with content, put there just
because someone found it interesting. No ads, no tracking and no AI
slop. It's always so obvious when website owners are stuffing their
sites with AI content, and I'm sick of seeing it.

Other random musings about gopher:

   - When's the last time you bookmarked a site in your web browser? 
     I've been bookmarking gopherholes like crazy because I don't want 
     to forget any of the interesting things I've discovered.

   - I have to chuckle when gopherholes go down temporarily. I had
     completely forgotten that aspect of the early web. Almost no one
     hosts a website on their own server anymore.

   - I've really enjoyed the command-line aspect of maintaining my
     gopherhole through SDF. I've always enjoyed doing things through
     a command-line interface and didn't switch from DOS to Windows
     until games started requiring it (I use a Mac these days). It's
     surprised me how quickly the command line became second nature
     to me again.

   - Updating this phlog is the first writing I've done for pleasure
     in a long time. Otherwise, writing is what I do for work. Turning
     your hobby into your job can sometimes have downsides.


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