No-one Visits the Same Website Twice

In December 2023 at an early Declarations worksession, a small group of researchers begin a journey down several tracks. One is the track of fiction, or more precisely, the power of CSS to be used as a tool to tell stories and question so-called "facts".

Remembering the excitement of an "always under construction" web, we begin to think about websites as shared living spaces. What if when you arrive home the furniture in the living room has been rearranged by your housemates? This is a novelty that websites such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram promise, that each user's personal webspace can be modified by others they follow in a constantly updated feed. However, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are not housemates, they are more like landlords who have their own key and enter without knocking to "fix" something. These dynamically generated websites offer content that differs for each account, depending on algorithms and source code that users can not access. Customisation of the user interface is severely limited.

In response, tools for restyling popular websites have been developed as browser extensions. One such example is Stylus, "an actively developed and community driven userstyles manager", which allows users to install "custom themes from popular online repositories, or create, edit, and manage your own personalized CSS stylesheets". It works with targeted URLs, meaning that many CSS stylesheets are made for popular websites such as YouTube, Instagram and Wikipedia. Common uses for Stylus are redecoration, nostalgic return to previous interface designs, introduction of features such as "dark mode", and "clean" versions of websites that remove bloat. Its stylesheets are shared amongst a community, yet Stylus is aimed towards individual users and their own personalised view of websites. A recent visit to the website for Stylus shows that it is plagued with comments from users who, after an update, struggle to retrieve their customised stylesheets from the centralised database.

After examining Stylus we continue our conversation around CSS as a tool for fiction. We agree that building a replacement for Stylus does not seem appropriate. The sociality of sharing a common space - be it in a shared house or on the web - is lacking with Stylus, and likely also with any browser extension that does a similar thing. Rather than implementing a technological solution, we decide to develop a social protocol.

What is protocol, and what is its purpose? In his book "Protocol: How Control Exists after Decentralization", Alexander Galloway remarks that prior to computers, "protocol" meant any correct, agreed-upon or proper behaviour. With the coming of the digital age, computer protocols were introduced as standards that govern implementation of specific technologies. Galloway observes that "what was once a question of consideration and sense is now a question of logic and physics". From the Network Working Group (NWG) of the early internet and its the modern-day counterparts the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), standards have been and continue to be proposed, discussed, debated and agreed upon through distribution of RFC (Request for Comments) documents. As they were first described in RFC-3 in 1969, RFCs are intended to encourage discussion, debate and development of standards and protocol.

And so, the "Web Jockey Protocol" is first described in February 2024 in an RFC distributed to the group of Declarations researchers. Its purpose is stated as "a social protocol for performing customised cascading stylesheets (CSS) of specified websites to an audience within an agreed period of time". This roughly described, tongue-in-cheek protocol leads to the development of wiki scratching, a workshop that proposes "performing" CSS while recalling "b2b2b" (back-to-back-to-back) DJing sessions. The results of the workshop at art school Le 75 in Brussels include remixed Wikipedia pages with personalised reactions to the content and web-to-print zines made from the outcomes.

Later in March, at OSP during a Declarations worksession we try out the WJP while signing the "guestbook"; a moment to perform CSS together in an Etherpad while styling the word "Declarations". We form a band. Each person chooses "instruments" (CSS properties) and we each "play" (write CSS) in rounds of 30 seconds, keeping time to a meta refresh that reloads an HTML file. Some instruments are very loud (e.g. the display property) and others are much more subtle (e.g. the box-shadow property). We improvise a performance that is not recorded anywhere apart from the timeslider on the Etherpad we are using to write CSS. And this performance is less a commentary on an existing website like Wikipedia than an improvised jam. But it is intriguing enough to be repeated (with variations) again in July at the Hackers & Designer's Summercamp in the workshops Web Jockey Protocol and Website Fabulations and again at the Website Fabulations workshop at Constant in Brussels.

Now, in October, including this very article you are reading, we are writing documentation of the various Web Jockey Protocols. We realise that there is an underlying plurality to how these have taken shape. Perhaps it is not a case of converging on one protocol, but instead beginning with a basic premise and allowing many protocols to develop. There are differing variables, including duration, number of participants, tools and materials, roles, context and requirements. Some performances have been chaotic, and that was a good thing. Sometimes it was not. What is becoming clearer is that it is important to develop collectivities before performing. In a shared space we must negotiate with each other how we want it to be used. No-one should decide to paint a wall pink and sleep in the kitchen without discussing it with cohabitants. Just as sharing a living space requires conversation, co-operation and co-ordination, the Web Jockey Protocols requires in the very least some introduction to the other participants and setting of common goals.

What does it mean to perform CSS? While it is still exciting to see stylistic changes happen to familiar websites, perhaps more importantly, it is a way for us to share our experience of the web in a synchronous setting. To learn about how the web is laid out, to be able to "touch" it. To share our experiences with each other by showing, not just telling. To be there, shoulder to shoulder in a collective effort. While the web has made it easier to connect with others over great distances, we often experience it alone, on our own individual devices.

Interestingly, many performances of the WJP have been focused on Wikipedia, perhaps the world's largest knowledge base that can famously be "edited by anyone". While Wikipedia seems like a democratic, altruistic space, editing content is a highly political process with its own protocols that are somewhat obscure to a newcomer. Changes can be easily reverted, deleted or suspended because of offending style or substance by seasoned editors. By performing the WJP, we can bring conversations that happen through the web into decentralised circles of commentary, critique and resistance.

Much of the web's content is generated dynamically when a user visits a page. This means that we see different things while on websites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And for websites that are generated as static HTML, the content is always subject to change. This is what makes the web a dynamic medium. No one steps in the same river twice.

What's next for the WJP? While these protocols have been performed within a metaphor of performance, we imagine other modalities and metaphors to come. For example, what if a website was a community garden plot? You might go there to remove weeds, to sow seeds, to nurture and prune plants. Or simply to just hang out and chat with the other gardeners. It would have a much slower rhythm than a DJ set or a live band performance. But the friction of slowness would remind us that the web can be a place of commoning, contemplation and reparation.

NB: All images in this article come from the Website Fabulations workshop held at the Hackers and Designer's Summercamp, July 2024.