I used to be obsessed with the night sky–particularly why I couldn’t see much in it. I replicated what I wanted to see with plastic glow-in-the-dark stars and obsessive drawing of them in the margins of my notebook. I still wish I grew up hearing more than just the white noise of air conditioning and filtered television.
Happy new year! I wanted to start the year off by making a small gathering space on the web; a space that takes you out of everything else and invites you to contemplate for a moment, a sort of rest stop. I spent the holidays alone and try to get off social media during times like this to avoid feeling too isolated, but remember that we’re all dispersed in some way… these forms of networking are all just us (ideally) signaling that we are still here—that even when we’re behind our screens, we’re still together. The ways we communicate when we’re apart matter as much as we how we communicate when we’re together.
GAZING is a nighttime gathering that you can enter when the stars have come out (7PM – 5AM, your local time). Make a wish, follow each other’s wishes, and take a moment to remember that we’re all under the same night sky…
Technically, this was interesting to make! I thought of starting out as some Chrome extension like a weird night time BeReal and knew I wanted some lightweight social features (and did it really scrappily here with name sharing), but ended up just settling with a website that you have to intentionally visit. It’s made with lowdb — I really want to try making more tiny social networks this year like the ones in my collection of nice social networks.
See you in the stars.
Love, Chia