unbox

eep, i caved faster than i thought i would. while i was bored taking a break between study sessions, i made a throwaway account for FriendRewind. let's get into it. 

first up, you sign up with a username, password, email, and your birthday. there's also the option to share your location. i only shared my age though, since that's less likely to be used to identify me in the real world. (i digress, but i've always found it sort of wild how quickly people just. started sharing their location and stuff on the interwebs. like... does stranger danger suddenly mean nothing? anyway.)

you have to verify your email before you can actually sign in. once you do, you're taken to the home page. on the left is what it looks like, though i customized mine to be pink. of course, the first thing i did was customize my profile, so on the right is how that looks right now as well. i'm still trying to get the hang of different element names, but it doesn't look half bad imo.

features

browse: pretty simple. in the new people tab, the first 300 new users are displayed. in recently active, it displays currently active, active in the last two hours, and recently active folks. all members shows. well. all members. sorta totally broke my browser, though. random serves you a random sample of 80 members. you can also use filters for various demographics.

layouts: where you can share and view layouts. pretty self-explanatory. you can also create layouts using the layout previewer, and the layout builder. in the layout builder, you change the values or links of various attributes you want, and then the code is generated? i'm assuming it's like other layout builders, like the various ones you might find on neocities. or even the blinkies / button creators. though part of me is a little wary, i can't find any statements from the creators on its usage, iykyk. 

blog: blog posts. sorted by newest first, but you can also view ones with the most kudos or comments. there is also genre sorting.

groups: as it turns out, the groups on here are more like... discord chats??? with channels and things like that. but when you look at them, they don't seem to be very active. people join and then. don't talk, i guess.

videos: where people share videos. seems to be really chill at the moment. mostly edits, art, random snippets from their days.

forums: self-explanatory. general discussions, introductions, movies & shows, music, games, and site feedback.

games & activities: this one caught me by surprise. apparently, you can play uno with other people here....????????? but every time i check, no one's using it. there's also an ms paint-esque app??? and a blinkies creator????? which you have to do alone. 

artists: music artists. when signing up, you can choose to create a special profile as a music artist, so you can share your music.

styling

lolz, actually figuring out how to style everything was a bit of a struggle at first, since i couldn't find actual documentation on the element names outside of others' layouts. by far, the most difficult thing to style is the navigation bar. i'm assuming we're actually supposed to use root, as the names are a bit convoluted. and even then, they're not guaranteed to work. it also doesn't bend to font changes without !important, for some reason. but i guess it's a general precaution put in place so people don't try to hide the navigation links, right? you also can't center the navigation links for some reason? but while that's annoying, it doesn't totally look bad...

other than that, everything's pretty much the same.

you add music by using the music tab, which is integrated with youtube. the embeds are then added to your profile, into the respective music player space. the song can also play as you browse the site, since it can also be added to your... personal music player? i'll refer to it as that for now. i have no idea how to style the one on profiles, though. i've tried a whole bunch of different element tags i've seen, but the most i can do is make the background transparent and remove the box shadow.

there's also a music equalizer that shows up whenever you play music on a profile. it's sorta totally terrifying, though. i don't know how to turn it off, which makes viewing my profile a little awkward on my end.

i deleted the sections, but you can also upload and add your own photos and videos to your profile. little photo and video galleries underneath your blogs. there's something cute about them. and you can get badges for different types of socialization, which end up displayed under your blurbs.

you can add social links to three different platforms natively: facebook, youtube, and tiktok.............. ???????? well. modernity is the name of the game, as i recall, even though it's a little strange. and you have six fields of interests to add if you want-- the same five from spacehey, but with games on the bottom, too. there's also a toggle for elements you might not want to display, instead of having to manually add display:none to them in the css / html. (it says that custom html is allowed, but i'm not really looking to mess with that right now.)

music

as previously mentioned, music can be added to your profile and your personal music player through the music tab, which is all youtube embeds. you know, i remember the blogs and layout tabs being absolutely flooded with music codes back when layouts were still open on spacehey, so making it as easy as this is rather admirable. but how?

also, no ads. ahaha.

activity / people

this space is rather quiet, but that's not really surprising. as of today, it's got about 3k users. most of the ones i've clicked on have pretty empty profiles, also. blogs and forums don't have a lot of comments, and neither do most profiles.

other thoughts?

iirc, the creator of this was also on spacehey, though i can't find their profile anymore. as i said before, it's very ambitious, with a lot of features already. such massive range only a year into its existence is somewhat concerning ,but it's also nice that this small community has so many different ways to interact with each other. i do wish there was a little more transparency regarding a few things...

for instance, all the official pages (privacy policy, rules, etc.) describe a team. but you only see the creator interacting with people. it would be nice to know the other members of the team, or at least how many there are. are there multiple teams? it's not clear. especially with a smaller community, it's a bit odd. the location thing is also strange on my end, but i already brought up that point.

all in all, it's not bad. but a little confusing, and i'm still wary.

well, those are my current thoughts about FriendRewind. i'm not endorsing it or anything, and i'm def not going to pack up all my virtual bags and move there. i've settled into my blog enough. but i do want to keep sticking around and see how it develops.

i'm sorry i haven't been responding to comments also!!!!!!!!!!! i will, i promise. these days have just been very stressful. (canvas down...................................)

sotd: king of sadness dw8 remix