March 31, 2026 Summer 2025
When was the last time it felt truly special to be online? Why do the websites we remember fondly from years ago feel so different from the ones we see today? What websites do we dream of returning to? And how can we build a space that belongs to us in the vast and sprawling worldwide web? We asked each other these questions as we learned about the poetic web during HTTPoetics, a 5-week class taught this summer by Todd Anderson, with Tyler Yin and Kayla Drzewicki—now in its second iteration.
Early in our class discussions, we all shared a common sentiment about the web: being online no longer feels the way it used to. Decades of enshittification have led to a frictionless, standardized, and optimized version of the web that is dominated by site builders, chatbots, search engines, social media feeds, and online marketplaces. It seems impossible to avoid the endlessly transactional and surveillant nature while on the Internet today.
In The Handmade Web, J.R. Carpenter offers us a different way to think about making websites by describing “web pages coded by hand rather than by software; web pages made and maintained by individuals rather than by businesses or corporations; web pages which are provisional, temporary, or one-of-a-kind; web pages which challenge conventions of reading, writing, design, ownership, privacy, security, or identity… I evoke the term 'handmade web' to suggest slowness and smallness as a forms of resistance.”
Despite the way the Internet feels today, however, we can still dream of a web that lets us be imaginative, experimental, and weird.
With that, we are excited to share a selection of six websites (presented during our final showcase) that purposefully misuse web elements, trouble “accepted” web conventions, serve as time capsules of the old internet, encourage you to look behind the scenes at its source code, and more.
mirror, mirror by Julia Higson
You can think of an Iframe tag as a window into another website; physically embedding an external website directly into the contents of the current page. In “mirror, mirror” by Julia Higson, iframes are used to replicate an experience similar to that of interacting with a Matryoshka doll—each click reveals a square that perfectly nests the one preceding it, revealing an endless labyrinth of textured boxes that cascade all over the browser window.
Mouse City by Harrison King
Have you ever visited a website that feels like it was made in a different internet era? Perhaps its style or characteristics feel a bit dated (in a good way), maybe it has a handmade quality to it, or it serves as a digital shrine to a niche interest or hobby? Welcome to “Mouse City”, the definitive homepage of the online community for mice, created by Harrison King. Learn about the Mice Olympics, Cheese Theft, Mouse Architecture, and more as you scroll past mouse GIFs, < marquee > text, and tiled backgrounds.
The Breakroom by Lauren Alcindor
Lauren Alcindor’s “The Breakroom” considers the unpredictable lifespan of links within the context of an interactive, therapeutic browser-based game in which you smash PNGs of glass jars and San Pellegrino bottles with a hammer. As you smash each object, your cursor produces a literal crack in the PNG and is accompanied by a glass-cracking sound effect. Sometimes, hitting the objects reveal an actual broken link to the ghost of a website that no longer exists.
A Loving Website by Nico Perey
“A Loving Website” by Nico Perey archives an impressionistic timeline of roses, clouds, and confessions dispersed across a memory garden. As you scroll horizontally through the site—taking a walk through a gradient backdrop of pink and green hues—you will notice that planted within the garden are memories with varying properties: cyclical, nostalgic, painful, joyous, buried, and persistent. With this website, Nico represents the act of remembering as a nonlinear and emotional journey, with recent memories overlapping and intertwining with memories from long ago.
Translation as transgression by Grace Kim
Grace Kim examines the practice of translation, and ponders the inevitability of how meaning changes as words become interpreted from one language to another. In “Translation as transgression,” a Korean poem will gradually transform as you click on individual phrases, turning them into English words. However, with each click and translation, the remaining Korean words in the poem begin to distort, becoming increasingly difficult to parse, until they are no longer legible. With words skewed and stretched beyond recognition, Kim suggests not only the impossibility of a true translation, but also the complications of attempting to reach it.
here, still by Iris E. Fernández Valdés
In “here, still” Iris E. Fernández Valdés prompts us to consider stillness and inaction as methods of participation. Subverting our assumption that interaction follows the act of doing something, Iris explores how the act of doing nothing can be a core interaction on its own—allowing your time (and attention) to be the driving forces behind her meditative poem. As you patiently wait with a quiet curiosity, the particles shift and rearrange themselves to form a sequence of questions that are worth the pause: “Can we hold still? Can we listen...? Will we wait...?”
By now, we’ve grown accustomed to the thinly veiled impermanence of the web. In an era of link rot when the lifespan of websites have become especially unpredictable (e.g. Glitch, a website builder that was beloved by our community ended its web hosting this past summer, or Vimeo introducing surprise paywalls to their platform) we’ve come to realize that we can no longer rely on established platforms or corporations. What will be the next to go? When these platforms shutter—often on short notice, leaving users with few options at best—the precious artworks they once housed go with it. Unless these works are properly archived or reuploaded they are essentially erased, along with all the hours that went into them. As a result, entire swathes of digital culture can be lost forever, which is devastating not just for those who strive to maintain it, but for the ones who come after us as well.
So after we mourn our favorite websites, it’s time we make our own. Websites that safeguard our memories, and carry our secrets; websites that take breaks; websites that change for us, and with us; websites that use a lot of space; websites that bring us to a different time and place; websites that are loud and have something to say.
The HTTPoetics Anthology 2025 can be found here.