Welcome to the pool! Take a seat and look up at the stars - each one is another place on the World Wide Web!
With so many stars out there, it's a shame to spend all your time on just two or three, don't you think?
But I have trouble remembering some of the stars I've been to - and not every place is somewhere you can while away the hours.
This pool is built to point at a special kind of place - websites that give you a nicer way to spend time online, sites that you can reliably pull up in a dull moment, a lazy night, or whenever you want to spend some pleasant time on the internet. In other words, websites where:
There's enough material to spend hours there
Updates are frequent
It's a good place to relax online
The icons in the list above are used to categorize the sites below. Every site on this list is made lovingly by individuals - happy surfing!
"From the hills of Dusk's End to the small alleys of Main Street,
you feel drawn to the lights of this vibrant metropolis in an
uncharted internet territory. The sign reads "Nightfall"."
This cool site has people sign up, and then they can host their own files on their plot of land in Nightfall City, converse in the Pub, share photos in the Booth, and so on. People post here just about every day, but it still feels small and cozy.
One of Melonking's many cool projects, this site displays random gifs in a "gallery" and you can go to another room by finding and clicking a door. The process of finding the door makes it a lot more meditative and encourages you to really look at the gifs, as opposed to a simple gallery layout. I love how the frames really encourage you to see the gifs as the artworks that they are!
A huge interactive canvas where users draw pixel art one pixel at a time. Inspired by an old social media event, this site is way cooler as the canvas is as large as the whole Earth - you can find your own town on the map and see what people are drawing there!
An absolutely massive archive of content produced by the Weather Channel from the 80's to the late 00's. You can watch old forecasts, bumpers, promos, and more. Very a e s t h e t i c.
"Floor796 is an animated scene showing the lives of characters from various works on the 796th floor of a huge space station. The animation is regularly expanded with new blocks (rooms) and characters from movies, TV series, games, anime, memes, etc. The project is being created by one author as a hobby starting in 2018."
This site plays ambient music on an internet radio station and shows videos and fun facts about Antarctica. There's multiple hours of music there to listen to.
A retro-style social media site with no algorithms or tracking. I haven't personally signed up for this, so take this recommendation with a grain of salt! But the community seems absolutely thriving and full of pretty good energy. Of course, it's still social media - so I decided not to call this one "relaxing" just in case.
A site for people to share shaders with the code used to generate them. Lots of trippy visuals and just cool stuff. You don't need to be a programmer to enjoy looking at these!
A forum for people building websites. It's very active and helpful, but not necessarily "relaxing". But if you have a site on the small web, it could be a nice place to browse!
