The vernacular web: A notion at the intersection of media theory and a utopian web imaginary

This article critically examines the vernacular web as a notion that exists in conceptual ambiguity between Media and Internet Studies, Web History, and artistic and activist practice. Drawing on Ruth Levitas’s argument that utopian implications are often embedded within the Social Sciences and can be critically excavated (2013), it argues that the vernacular web operates across two registers: an analytical concept describing amateur, non-institutional, and ostensibly autonomous forms of online practice, and a temporally grounded imaginary that invests the early web with utopian value. By analysing the reciprocity between these two registers, the article traces how utopian assumptions about autonomy, participation, and digital well-being circulate across scholarship, historical narratives, and activist practice. Through the cases of Olia Lialina's essays and The Yesterweb, it identifies three constituent values of functional autonomy, while arguing that this imaginary remains half-baked: oriented towards aesthetics and affect rather than a reflection on the feasibility, limitations and potential risks.