Web drifting as a creative practice
I love spending hours drifting through the web. Not rushing from one click to the next in search of efficiency or purpose, but wandering like a digital flâneur. A curious walker, moving with the same energy Guy Debord described in his concept of psychogeography [1].
La dérive, as theorized by the Situationist International, invites a person to explore a city by letting themselves be guided by its contours, atmospheres, and ambiances. No map. No goal. Just openness to discovery.
I apply this same approach to cities like Lyon, where I live, or any place I visit. I walk for the sake of walking. I look up at buildings, sidewalks, signs, plants pushing through cracks in the pavement, the textures of walls, the people passing by. I collect the overlooked and the unexpected little urban wonders.
I do the same when online.
I don’t stick to the highways of the web — not Facebook, not Instagram, not X, not Threads. Even the quieter suburbs like Bluesky don’t hold me for long. I prefer the alleys, the tiny roads, the forgotten paths: personal blogs, quirky side-projects, one-page sites, old wikis, obscure digital gardens.
I stroll. I drift. I bookmark.
Like a street photographer, I now want to curate this practice, to show my collection and share the souvenirs I’ve gathered from my walks through the digital landscape.
For now, I’m using leaflet.pub to collect and display these finds. It’s a perfect little tool — humble, lightweight, poetic in its own way. Maybe later I’ll build something more personal, but for now, I love its form and philosophy.
Eventually, I want to write a small guide to web drifting, a psychogeographer’s handbook for navigating the dense, urban-like networks of the internet, and learning to see what’s hiding beyond the algorithmic feed.
First leaftlet : Indie spaces and tools
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Notes