I Was the Wizard

 

I Was the Wizard

What Geocities, HTML, and Time Taught Me About Tech, Trust, and the Myth of Progress

Before the algorithm, there was HTML. Before the internet tracked you, it challenged you. Before the walled gardens, we built our own damn neighborhoods.

I had a Geocities site. It wasn’t pretty. It blinked. It probably had a MIDI file autoplaying something awful. I went through hell hunting down that MIDI file — and more hell finding the exact snippet of code that would let it autoplay. That’s how it worked back then. Want a marquee? Scour a message board. Want a background that sparkles or a dancing hamster gif? You begged, borrowed, and Frankensteined your way through JavaScript and Java snippets.

We weren’t just writing HTML — we were navigating UseNet, TelNet, Gopher, FTP. The web wasn’t just a place; it was a network of protocols you had to know how to walk.

And downloading an image? Sometimes that meant getting a text file of ASCII gibberish and reassembling it yourself, line by line, into something the browser could read. We weren’t just surfing the web. We were soldering it together.

It was messy. It was slow. But it was ours.

And that experience taught me something today’s tech rarely does:Stylized digital collage showing a retro computer with glowing HTML code, a pixelated wizard hat, and fading Geocities-style graphics — symbolizing lost user control over the internet.

That you can control the machine — not the other way around.

And that experience taught me something today’s tech rarely does:

That you can control the machine — not the other way around.

When Everyone Became a Publisher

For the first wave of internet users, building came first. You had to know how to upload, format, link, troubleshoot. There was no drag and drop, no wizard behind the curtain. You were the wizard.

So when the rest of the world flooded in through Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok, they came into a digital landscape where everything was pre-built. Prepackaged. Polished. And totally opaque.

They never learned the bones. So they never learned to question them.

They believed:

  • If it looked official, it must be true

  • If it was online, it must be right

  • If it was easy, it must be safe

They were taught to consume. I had to learn to build. And that made all the difference.

The Ageist Arrogance of the App Generation

I’ve lost count of how many times a younger tech bro looked at me sideways because of my age. Like the moment the grays came in, I stopped knowing how computers worked.

So let me say this clearly:

I was doing this before they built the sites to make it easy for you.

The truth? I can’t always figure out the modern stuff. But that’s not about age. That’s because:

It’s built haphazardly. It’s built for tracking. It’s not built for users. It’s built for data extraction.

The License to Steal

Congress never should’ve let software companies license rather than sell. That one decision flipped the digital world upside down:

  • You thought you owned that software. You didn’t.

  • You paid hundreds of dollars and still had no rights.

  • You weren’t a customer. You were a tenant.

They control it. They change it. They revoke it. They monitor it. And you? You get to be grateful it still loads.

You thought you were upgrading your experience.

You were downgrading your rights.

The Seamless Trap

The first time I noticed that Facebook at home picked up exactly where it left off at work? I was done. That wasn’t convenience — it was surveillance.

I sold the laptop. Not because it was broken.

Because I was.

What It Means to Be the Wizard

When you know how the machine works, you can see when it starts working against you.

We used to have standardization. We had shared systems. Shared languages. Now? Every app speaks a different dialect. Every interface wants you isolated.

They call it personalization. I call it possession.

So the next time someone sneers because you don’t use the latest social app or haven’t upgraded your cloud sync or can’t navigate a TikTok trend?

Tell them you used to be the wizard. And wizards don’t fall for cheap magic tricks.

Truth is powerful. And it prevails.


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