This is for those who, like myself, are allergic to a majority of social media but still enjoy what the Internet has to offer and what was once promised. This is a living document and will be updated sporadically when I remember something or find something new. To start, the most obvious one is Internet Archive, I go on days-long rabbit holes that feel informative rather than wasted. I don’t think these are secrets, but maybe you need a reminder or you’re not familiar with them. Some of the following writing may be clunky and I may meander. It's also heavily tailored to my own interests. I've been editing and re-editing this for days now for such a small list so bear with me. 🖤🖤 published Dec 21, 2024
Websites and blogs
Active
Incredible artists are featured. The overall quality makes you want to keep exploring even when you're familiar with many of the artists they highlight (as they tend to choose very established creators, but it's still lovely to take the time to sit with high quality images and pore over the details). Art of Animation and Grand Portfolios is where the concentration of this website’s output lies (imo)
Highlights (of which there are many)*:
Art of Magical Girl Pretty Sammy
*click on the images for the full picture, they often have slivers of the image to keep everything neat.
More art to explore!
Everyone knows 50 Watts right? If not: 50 Watts is a growing archive of weird and wonderful visual ephemera from around the world.
In their words: shmuplations.com is a repository of Japanese game developer translations, covering primarily (but not exclusively) older arcade and console games from the 80s and 90s. Despite the name “shmuplations”, we cover all genres: platformers, rpgs, strategy, vs fighting, and more.
I was immediately hooked with the roundtable interview translation that featured two of my all-time favorite artists Bengus and Kinu Nishimura! (Known for working heavily with Capcom/Street Fighter franchise.) Check it out! and then, of course, explore the website.
Highlight
Interview Archive (shmuplations currently contains over 400 translated developer interviews: that’s around 1 million words, or 10 books worth of game history! )
Plug your city in, you might find something new to do! Atlas Obscura’s dedication is right in its name, finding the odd (and sometimes overlooked) places in any given location. I always tell people to check this website if they’re traveling to a new spot, it’s basically a guide for the strangeness in our world and if you’re someone like me dying to go to a still-standing operating theatre or a penis museum, this website may be able to show you that one isn’t too far off from where you live or are traveling to. (Well, the phallological museum is only in Iceland, but y’know what I mean.)
Based in Tokyo, Sabukaru is a culture mag with incredibly engaging features that focus on media new, old and contemporary.
Highlights
Before Y2K: DIGITAL ART IN JAPAN BEFORE THE 2000S
THE 5TH DIMENSION OF TATSUYUKI TANAKA
In their words: Exploring Otherworldly Cinema since 2004
Highlights
Sunshine Gore In ’64: Awash With The Love Goddesses Of Blood Island
If you still want to get that personal touch from people, insight on others lives and interests, etc, this is a great way to look for that without it having an endless scrolling component to it. That’s not all that’s on there, but there’s a lot of charming blogs that people put so much of their heart into that I adore. Here are some of my favorites:
cynicalneoprincessism who is incredibly active in general with their blogspot, YouTube and more.
I think anyone with a fascination of gross anatomy and historical medical imagery and information has made themselves familiar with MA, it’s always worth mentioning though. In 2023 she moved to Patreon, but there are a trove of writings and images on the blog. Joanna Ebenstein's been doing this since 2007.
Highlights
This is just the tag “anatomical venus” because she covers them often (even having released a book) and it was love at first sight regarding this historical medical curiousity. I’m sure I stumbled upon most of these images and their terminology through her work.
Jacques Fabian Gautier d'Agoty (1717-1785)
Internet radio broadcasting from San Fran. No ads.
Highlights
Book publishers and book resources:
I’m dedicating this to very accessible and visually stunning publishers. Again, these are no secrets and if I were to list all my favorite publishers it would probably ovetake, but here is a small selection of people whose output or curation has been consistently brilliant.
Having been passionate about ART and UNDERGROUND COMICS for many years, Julian Huber, founder of The Mansion Press, one day decided to create a publishing house to promote these two important but under-represented aspects of world culture.
all the warnings in the world, but if you like extreme art, visuals and writing, well this is for you (and me).
Again, 50 Watts. This is their focus on retail. Sometimes they curate from other publishers, a great aggregate in that sense.
Mind expanding comics for free-thinkers worldwide
Defunct but still worth skulking through if unfamiliar:
Japanese arts and culture blog, something I found myself going to routinely when I was much younger.
Admittedly this has a lot of broken links and missing images having stopped being curated in 2013, but it holds a special place in my heart. (Ryan S has moved onto publishing with youth in decline, so all is well.) Another blog I found at a young age that was one of the first I stumbled on dedicated to speaking on alternative/horror artists from Japan and more. Truth be told it was its memory that has a hand in inspiring me to finally give blogging a sincere effort, cataloguing my interests and preoccupations. I loved it so much and have a strong memory of this post, a man with a Shintaro Kago tattoo! It was *the first* time I saw a Japanese horror artist’s work tattooed on someone and I was enthralled. The side bar links are filled with great suggestions of artists and websites that can also put you on a journey or just have you nod your head with an assured feeling of “yeah, this was a cool virtual spot to land on.” (Mentions such as the Tokyo Scum Brigrade and Monster Brains blog and the variety of great artists websites they link to, or are listed in the “us & friends” section solidifies such assuredness.) A sort of if you know you know feeling.
Highlights
Every Scanlation We’ve Ever Done and original scanlations It’s all broken links now. Maybe you can use the wayback machine to retrieve the individual posts if curious. I’m mostly sharing for posterity and so you can get a sense of how cool it all was. Dedicating one’s time to translating the freaky experimental weirdos of the manga world. It’s always a necessity, y’know?
Early Manga Days: A Chronology (that’s its first entry and the tag it spawned is worth exploring.)
In their words: A collection of the strange, surprising and forgotten. If you’re familiar with Tokyo Scum Brigrade blog this is them.
Favorite post: Halloween Monthly Halloween, the first anthology dedicated to shojo horror manga, put bewitching idols on its covers as the face of fear.
MISC
I use this to block the side bar on my twitter, makes the experience much more bearable when I do decide to take a peek into the land of the abominable. You can probably also do the same with the uBlock Origin feature that can hide different sections of a website with a handy point and click tool. With uBlock installed right click and hit “Block element…” you’ll be able to figure it out from there. Other examples of its usefulness: blocking shorts from coming up on YouTube, or any other features of a website you find to be pesky.
If you still use it as your primary search engine. I’ve switched to Duckduckgo. (I mean, I still occasionally use Google though, so I have it installed regardless.)
Block genAI from coming up in your search results
You might want to reinstall Firefox as Chrome is hellbent on eventually removing support for many apps that allow you to control your online experience, such as uBlock Origin.
In Conclusion
If you’re looking to escape the big sites like tiktok, twitter, instagram, reddit, facebook and the like that are disjointed and encourage scrolling and unfettered access to your attention and mind then I’ve tried to cobble together something that may help you stave those off a bit longer.