The wonder of the useless web

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This week we’re quoting…

Simon Pont (Author and Brand-Builder)

"The internet reflects us at our eccentric, absurd, trivial best… Laughing babies and sneezing baby panda’s speak to us, despite having nothing to say, and we find all these things hypnotically watchable and briefly hysterical."

Where did he say this? 

Actually, he wrote it – in his book The Better Mousetrap: Brand Invention in a Media Democracy. But these words came to mind while we were writing about gaming and collaboration on the blog this week, because we were thinking about how incredible it is that ideas thrive when people have a space to collaborate and experiment. 

And the internet is a space to do that. 

Have you ever seen Staggering Beauty? Don’t click that link if you’re likely to have a reaction to fast-moving images and flashing lights – we’ll give you the lowdown here anyway: 

It’s been online since 2012, and it’s…silly. As you move your cursor across the screen a worm-like animation, with two small eyes, moves with you. If you shake your cursor vigorously, the flashing lights and music start. 

It’s nothing. But it’s also, in a very weird way, everything that’s wonderful about the internet: a strange pointless thing that you just keep coming back to because someone made that. An experiment in Javascript that has stayed online because…well, just because. 

The Useless Pages

The Useless Pages was an online list of links to web pages that were basically useless – but funny and captivating and silly. Over time, this site grew into a big directory, with links archived by category – helping to record and organise the proliferation of early internet memes and strange, pointless sites. Marc Andreessen once described it as ‘one of the best sites on the Web’. 

It’s not online anymore, but there have been plenty of sites imitating it since. 

And if you know where to look, there are endless useless wonders online – from Staggering beauty above (our personal favourite) to the HampsterDance site, a website dedicated to GIFs of dancing hamsters; and another site full of images and animations of cats in space (we’re really sad we can’t find this one anymore). 

Are weird and useless pages really useless? 

We don’t think so. For all their silliness, pointless internet experiments and collaborative meme-sharing sites are an example of the way in which skills are learned and shared in tech. 

We try something, we experiment, we show other people. They see it and they try something too. They build on the skills we used to make our thing, and add more skills on top, and make something new. 

Innovation needs freedom to experiment. It needs people to feel confident to try something out even if there’s no obvious purpose. Innovation can only happen if we play, share ideas, layer ideas on top of other people’s ideas, and share our experiments unashamedly. 

So we think the useless web – the thousands and thousands of pointless sites and projects – are a demonstration of collaboration and knowledge-sharing at work. It’s not always pretty or purposeful, but it’s always creating the potential for something more. 

Let’s keep making silly stuff. To keep the energy of innovation alive, but also just so we can enjoy being alive. 

Have an idea for a topic you'd like us to cover? We're eager to hear it. Drop us a message and share your thoughts.

Catch you next week,
The LEAP Team