I May Have Disappeared Again (spacehey and my experience so far)
Tue, 9 Apr 24
Yeah so uh... I have been gone from neocities for a little bit... again. But I'm here to try and prove I havent completely abandoned my site, I promise! Straight to the point I have a spacehey account and I've been using it a lot recently, so much so that in the past few weeks I've done more blogging on there then I have on my site in the entire time I've had it! (uhh... and you can read those blogs here if you want)
What is spacehey?
So i feel like most people on here would have already heard of spachey but incase you haven't: spacehey is a recreation of myspace. I'd kind of consider it as the halfway between modern social media and making your own website like the community here on neocities (which makes sense considering myspace was the bridge between the two at the time). You dont have as much freedom as you would making your own website, but you can add html/css to existing pages to customise them. The actual purpose of spacehey is to be a blogging/forum/friend making platform. You set up a profile and then friend other users (basically following but the request must be accepted and can be denyed by the other user (yes I am overexplaining this but just incase this information is genuinely useful to anyone out there)). From there you can post bullitens (only visable to your friends and will expire after a maximum of 10 days), blogs (visable to either everyone on the blog page, your friends, or kept private to yourself, among other visability options. editable and available forever unless you choose to delete it), and forums (gonna be honest I have no experience with this yet but it works exactly how youd expect a forum to work i guess). You find other users though a browse page which displays online and new users, or through their blog/forum posts or commments. Spacehey also has an instant messaging service.
Where do I put my blogs?
Because its so much easier to access (I use it on my phone pretty regularly) I've just been spending a lot of time on there. I've been considering how I'd incorperate my blog posts between neocities and spacehey because I really want this to be my central blogging place, but spacehey is just easier?? The best I've got is to copy over my spacehey blogs that I like onto here but I don't want it to seem like im neglecting this site?? Idk, but i would be very happy to hear anyones thoughts on this!
What you might want to know if you make a spacehey
Spacehey is not the greatest place in the world. For starters its pretty prone to raids where multiple new accounts pop up at once with pfps containing something distasteful (usually gore) to get a reaction out of other users. Since on the home page there is a "cool new people" section, the only way to avoid these raids is to block it with your browser (I'm yet to find a tutorial that works for myself though). The accounts also sometimes have their usernames set as threats of violence and such, sometimes targeting a specific person. The accounts are usually removed within the day. The cool new people section is not the only place you might find gore though. Some accounts will posts blogs claiming to have images of cute puppies and kittens but are instead just more gore, this is thankfully not something I've experienced but apparently is somewhat common?
Other things to watch out for is just people not declaring content warnings (and yes btw: content warning for mentions of various things throughout this paragraph). Finding completely unfiltered vents previewed on the blog page. People talking in depth about how they have or how they plan to hurt themselves. Clicking on profiles whose whole "aesthetic" is about how "we are not real" and "this is all a simulation". Just general doom and gloom rants from people clearly in a very dark place. Largely spacehey users are mindful of others potential triggers and what have you but occassionally you do just find this stuff out in the open.
Outside of that spam is also very common on spacehey in a few ways. Firstly spam exactly how you'd expect it: you're scrolling the blog page and theres these random posts from an automotive comapany in Dubai?? Some tech bro company trying to sell you their new ai tool?? Another company is trying to sell their buisness solutions course to you. Its like where do these people come from??? Why are they here??? Why is a dental clinic trying to advertise there buisness to a bunch of terminally online children?? And even if an account seems like a normal person trying to be friends with you, there's a handful of accounts whose whole purpose is to spam-friend as many people as possible and then self-promote a thing theyre doing (usually music) to you. I've gotten to the point where I'll just block friend requests from these accounts because if you decline theyll just send another request in a few days time when youre online again. I sometimes don't mind them when they actually make an effort to interact with people beyond what theyre trying to promote (for instance there's an account by the name of wubzilla who mass-friends so many people and leaves a comment on everyones profile, something similar to "nice profile", but does genuinely seem to enjoy interacting with people on the site). But most of these accounts will do nothing beyond get your attention and then maybe direct you to the thing they're promoting.
Also if you're anything like me and dont like horror, spacehey is not the easiest site to navigate comfortably. A lot of spcaehey users like horror and present it boldly on their profiles. The amount of profiles I've clicked on where I have been welcomed with a literal fnaf jumpscare is immense. Sometimes even very cute and innocent looking accounts will actually open to horror-centred profiles.
I think lastly (thank goodness) something else to watch out for is a lot of spacehey users are very young and theres a very strong "minors and adults should not interact" kind of mindset on the site. I've seen these weird feuds between people where someone will say "i've noticed a lot of minors interacting with adults even though they have minors dni on their profile, minors need to learn to respect adults boundries" followed by a flood of comments from people saying "actually its the adults breaking the boundaries of minors!!" or vice versa. Now obviously I want to make it very clear people need to respect others boudaries and if you know you're on someones dni, then you should not break that boundary. My main concern is with the extent some people take these ideas to: this idea that any iteraction between an adult and a minor (or with any two people with more than a 3 year age difference) is inherently dangerous. I wouldn't be so bothered with people being overprotective of themselves and setting very specific boundaries but if you are around the ages of 17-21 (myself included) you get put in this weird grey area where you're not always strictly on peoples dnis but within a few months you will be, or the reverse of that where you are on peoples dnis for being too young but in a few months you might no longer be. In an attempt to remedy this I try to make it very clear that for whatever reason I'm totally okay with people blocking me, no explaination needed, no questions asked (obviously as it should be but I know some people worry they might make the other person upset or angry). But just as someone coming from parts of the internet where this mindset doesnt really exist (people of any age can interact with each other just keep it appropriate and dont be a creep?) it is certainly an adjustment to make.
Uhh, but yeah, that was a lot more than I intended to write out and also I think there were other things I wanted to talk about, but for now I'll post this so I'm at least posting something! Stay safe and as always I'd love to hear youre thoughts on my thoughts (just email me or leave a comment on my neocities profile or whatever). Thank you for reading! :3