Title: Why Gopher?
Date: 20190408
Tags: me gopher
========================================

Why did I set up a gopher presence?  What attracted me here?

Gopher fits my personality in a number of ways.

I think the foremost motivating feature is gopher's simplicity.  I  guess I'm
one of those "dismayed with the modern web" folks.  I find the flavor of the
week design and manipulative attention grabbing increasingly annoying.  There is
more crap than content.  I typically run with an ad blocker and javascript off
by default.

Adding gopher to my technology ecosystem adds diversity.  For example, it gives
me an easy outlet for text based ranting.  To do the same on the web, you need
some sort of styling and presentation.  And likely it won't be accessible
enough, or good looking enough, or mobile friendly enough.  All good things to
be, for sure, but those are things you have to learn.  HTML, CSS, javascript?
How's it look in Firefox, Chrome, in reader view, on a phone?  And I am finding
web browsers more interested in providing features for web companies than they
are for the users.  I do like technology, but technology that is understandable
and easy to use.  I like to know how stuff works and the more complex and
layered something gets the harder it is to know how it works and the less I want
to use it.  I'd like to be able to say "I could build the whole thing up from
scratch if I had to".  Gopher scratches the itch of new technology (to me) and
technology I can learn and implement everything about.

Gopher's simplicity also means it's easy to run.  Partially a Sysadmin by trade
and just self reliant, I like to run my own stuff.  Running a gopher server is
no harder than a simple web server but I could write or cobble together with
command line tools, my own gopher client or server.  It's low bandwidth and low
resource so cheap to run.  Keeps me in control of my content and the technology
I use.

I do also like that gopher is different.  I don't tend to care about sticking
with the crowd.  I never liked any social media platform.  Too click-baity.  Too
much advertising  Too much selling my information.  And I am more interested in
what anyone has to say about certain topics than I am in what certain people
have to say about everything.

Or maybe I'm just old.

What else fits my personality?
I have a Trabant and work on my own cars (my newest is 16 years old).
I run OpenBSD.
I love retro computers and assembly programming.
I use vi.  Not Vim.
I use Links for the web as much as possible.
I am most often in a terminal.