Can We Bring Back the Fun Internet?

I miss the internet when it felt a little less... calculated.

Remember when you could click on one thing, somehow end up somewhere completely unrelated 20 minutes later, and actually find something you loved?

A tiny shop. A blog you'd never heard of. Someone's oddly specific collection of ideas. A website that looked nothing like every other website you'd visited that day.

There was something fun about not knowing exactly what you'd find.

Now it feels like everything online has a job.

Every Instagram post needs a hook. Every blog post needs a keyword. Every button needs to convert. Every email needs a strategy. Every photo needs to fit the grid.

And yes, I realize the irony of a website designer saying this. I spend a pretty significant portion of my life thinking about exactly those things.

But I also think we've lost a little something along the way.

I Miss Wandering Around Online

Maybe this is why I still love Pinterest.

Not necessarily the Pinterest that wants me to buy the shoes I looked at three days ago. I mean the part where I search for one thing and suddenly I'm looking at a 1960s hotel lobby, vintage matchbook packaging, an incredible color combination and a kitchen in Copenhagen.

That's my kind of internet.

I don't always want to be productive. Sometimes I just want to find something cool.

And I think there's value in that.

Not Everything Needs to Earn Its Keep

I've caught myself doing this with Bella & Bloom, too.

I'll have an idea and immediately start asking all the responsible business-owner questions.

Will anyone search for this?

Does this lead to a service?

What's the CTA?

Can I turn it into content?

Meanwhile, sometimes the original idea was simply, "Ooh, this would be fun."

I'm trying to listen to that voice a little more.

It's actually a big part of why I've been growing the Design Library. I wanted a place for things that inspire me, things I make, things I find and things that might spark an idea for someone else.

Some of it has a practical purpose.

Some of it is just pretty.

I'm completely fine with that.

WANDER THROUGH THE DESIGN LIBRARY →

I Want More Personality, Please

One of my favorite things about the earlier internet was how unmistakably human it was.

You knew when you'd landed on someone's little corner of it.

There were opinions. Random side notes. Inside jokes. Weird design choices. Things that probably weren't technically the "right" thing to do.

But you remembered them.

That's something I think about a lot now, especially with AI making it possible to churn out an enormous amount of perfectly acceptable... everything.

Perfectly acceptable captions.

Perfectly acceptable articles.

Perfectly acceptable images.

Perfectly acceptable websites.

Maybe "perfectly acceptable" is exactly what I'm tired of.

I'd rather see something with a point of view.

That's Also Why I Started Bloomin' Female Force

There are so many women out there building genuinely interesting businesses that most of us would never stumble across on our own.

That's what I love about the Bloomin' Female Force features.

One week I might be introducing you to someone making jewelry. Another week it's a woman teaching technology or building a nonprofit.

They're not here because they bought an ad.

They're here because I think what they're doing deserves a little more visibility.

It reminds me of the internet I miss. One person saying, "Hey, look what I found. You might like this too."

That's really all it needs to be.

MEET THE WOMEN OF BLOOMIN' FEMALE FORCE →

So Maybe We Just Make the Internet Fun Again?

I'm not abandoning SEO.

I'm definitely not telling my web design clients that buttons no longer need to make sense.

And I will probably continue spending an unreasonable amount of time deciding whether something needs another 12 pixels of space.

I am who I am.

But I do want Bella & Bloom to feel like a place you can actually poke around.

Come for a web design tip and end up downloading a printable.

Come for a printable and discover a woman-owned business.

Come to read about a website and somehow end up looking at something pretty I found on Pinterest.

No funnel required.

Because maybe the best parts of the internet were never the parts we were supposed to find.

They were the things we stumbled into.

And I'd really like a little more of that again. ♡