Dispatch from the Indie Web #1
In which I interview one of my favourite personal bloggers
More interviews! The indie web is all about intentionally building community and there is no better to do that than just talking to people.
I called Ava, from Ava’s Space, one of my favourite personal bloggers and that’s for a very good reason: her website reads like the kind of blog my teenage self would have loved to have. Maybe you are a teenager right now reading this and wish you had your own corner of the internet in which to muse and rant and hypothesise and collect all of the things that inspire you. This also applies if you’re not a teen. Ava isn’t.
What I mean to say is this is like the Platonic ideal of blog—cosy, honest, designed and updated with dedication—and it’s filled with genuinely thought-provoking entries about the web communities, work culture, disability, tech utopia, data protection, self-acceptance, grief. So much more. It feels like a window into its owner’s mind.
This blog practices what it believes in: it’s part of an independent community on the Bearblog platform, it’s ad-free and unmonetised, doesn’t collect your data, doesn’t promote its posts externally. It’s neither newsletter nor professional portfolio. It doesn’t demand attention, emotional investment or really anything. It exists for its own sake, for Ava’s sake, for pleasure, as a hobby.
It encapsulates what, to me, makes the indie/small/alt web so appealing. And it’s why, when I reported on the Web Revival for New_Public, Ava’s Space was the first place I reached out to interview.
By the way, if you like reading about alternative online spaces, you might like these articles.
Below is our conversation, lightly edited for clarity and concision.
How and why did you create Ava’s Space? What’s the ethos behind it and who is it for?
I initially created Ava’s Space a few years ago as a website on Neocities, later moved it to Nekoweb; both are static website hosters that are popular within the indie web if you don’t want to selfhost.
For blogging, I initially used Smol.Pub, but later moved to Bearblog. My Smol.Pub was personal, but the blog I have now was initially meant to serve as a sort of public learning documentation and portfolio. Back then, I actually wanted to write about my progress in learning programming and Linux: my progress in The Odin Project, learning Rust, trying out Linux From Scratch, coding custom themes for the Steam Deck, my setup and more. But first my dog died, then I felt progressively more sick from undiagnosed autoimmune diseases I’ve had for most of my life.
So the blog was mostly dormant until I got diagnosed with Crohn’s disease in March 2024 and promptly needed to be hospitalised for [severe bleeding]. I had lost a lot of blood and needed a blood transfusion. That’s when I kind of revived the blog and started writing about my personal life, especially my health.
For the months afterwards, I was mostly bed-bound, trying out different medications until finding something that worked, and that’s when I started blogging a lot. I couldn’t do much for my part time university studies due to brainfog and low energy and I worked from home.
I’d describe the ethos behind it as just having fun—sharing myself with the world, sharing my thoughts, writing about things I am passionate about at the moment without the intent to go viral or to monetise.
I find it refreshing to have a space online that is accessible, free, doesn’t try to get you to sign up for some newsletter, doesn’t sell you courses and isn’t there to create a fake online persona for brands to project their products into. I don’t have to game any algorithm and I have a sanctuary online where people cannot just add their own vitriol to my post and drag it in front of their rabid fans that do the fighting for them.
In your opinion, is there a web revival going on in the 2020s? Why / why not?
I have a really hard time judging this because I am in such a bubble with my website and blog. I notice a lot more people making their own websites, making blogs (sadly, mostly on Substack or Medium) and even YouTubers who make content about browsing websites on Neocities or Nekoweb, telling you how to make your own. But if it’s enough to tip the scales to really call it a web revival, I’m not sure; it may become more as people escape the bot and ad infested social media.
Are you on social media? Why / why not?
I am not on social media, no. I used to [be], but I progressively deleted more and more of it since 2018. Bearblog has some social elements, and I have Discord to talk to friends, but that’s it. I don’t need anything else to keep up with people I like. Mostly, I want to limit my exposure to ads and other manipulation, as much as is feasible. I don’t want to give my attention, data, and money to companies I don’t want to support.
Personally I think tech companies have too much power nowadays and run mostly unchecked while their CEOs vote and invest against not only my interests, but the lives of my friends, my love, and myself. I talk about this more in my blog post, The tech utopia fantasy is over. I’m also specializing in data protection law and intend to become a data protection officer, so that plays into it as well.
I even gave an interview in 2019 about deleting social media.
What are the top 3 places/creators/resources you’d recommend to someone just getting to know this part of the internet?
1st: The 32bit Cafe is the top spot, I’d say; they have a great forum community with lots of helpful threads and a lot of resources and events.
2nd: Browsing the Neocities Discovery to see what amazing sites can be created if you stray away from the corporate net and their profile design restrictions.
3rd: Blogroll.org to find more interesting blogs to follow. Some have interviews done by Manuel Moreale in his People & Blogs series (I do! https://manuelmoreale.com/pb-ava)
Thanks, Ava, for agreeing to chat!
Having a personal blog is one of a multitude of ways to exist on the internet and I hope this has been an inspiring glimpse into that.
With this Dispatch series, I hope to bring you lots more juicy takes, links, and curiosity-stoking morsels from beyond the walled garden of mainstream social media platforms.
That sounds like a truly memorable experience. Always speaking with someone whose work you’ve admired it's a joy and a way to go on further.