Meet Clone.fyi 🐑

Today we’re officially announcing Clone, a joint project from Dirt and Boys Club. We’ve previously teased Clone in Adweek and on our podcast, Tasteland. 

Clone is your favorite founder’s favorite bookmark. It will function like a Drudge report for technology and culture, aggregating relevant links on an hourly basis and at the speed of breaking news. 

Clone joins Dirt, Prune, Blank and STRUNG in the dirtyverse family of brands. With the entertainment sector covered, we saw a hole in the landscape for tech and culture-savvy readers exhausted by X and Substack and less likely to lurk on Reddit and Hacker News.

The Clone site was designed by Spencer Chang to mimic the aesthetics of the early internet. It includes some surprise interactive elements! I talked to Spencer about the design process below.

Run into any bugs? 🪳 Let us know. Clone will start out as a web page and eventually add a newsletter rollup. — Daisy Alioto 

Do you already LOVE Clone? Show your support by posting this adorable graphic. If you can’t grab it from above, we have it in a Google Drive here. If you REALLY love Clone, there’s a version that will fit your avatar. Or buy it on Zora here.

DAISY ALIOTO IN CONVERSATION WITH SPENCER CHANG

Daisy Alioto: Can you explain the concept of “communal computers” and how that runs through your work? 

Spencer Chang: I think we are at a crossroads with our visions of technology these days—one road sees technology as an increasingly powerful supercomputer for individuals and the other sees technology as a collective medium. “Communal computers” became a rally around the latter, calling upon all the good, fun, and hope that still thrives in pockets of the internet. It emphasizes how everything that happens with technology, happens because of us, through our intentions and our hopes. I think a lot of how computers are like us in a lot of ways—our phones become marked with their own personalities, we form algorithmic systems collaboratively. I’m interested in amplifying how computers can empower us to bring out the best in each other.

​All my work, whether tool, game, or sculpture, focuses on this idea of “communal computers.” They invite people in, provide a space for interactive and whimsical play, mediate an everyday experience with technology that lives and grows with us. From prompting people to dance with their phones to turning the internet into a lively plaza to making public structures that facilitate sharing, I hope each work invites us to consider how our devices, platforms, and systems can be co-opted for our collective fulfillment.

​DA: In thinking about Clone as a throwback to the earlier, smaller internet, which references were you drawing on?

SC: I looked back at old catalogs, registries, and other kinds of aggregation spaces like Yahoo’s original home page and early BBS systems. Yahoo was once completely manually curated by a team of “web surfers” so it felt meaningful to call back to those roots of the internet. These days people often reach for old internet things for the nostalgia, but Clone is really trawling the web collecting these scoops for you.

​DA: What are the communal or interactive elements of the site design?

SC: The site has a live-updating visitor count to give a sense of how it grows, links that become marked when you click on them, and a row of sheep that patter around and hang out on top of the footer. Your cursor on the site is also a sheep, and as you click around, it’ll clone itself and add some new friends to the bottom. I had played with some more involved mechanics like having some animation every time someone clicked on a link and left the site, but I thought it might detract from the main function of the site as this registry, especially when there's a lot of people on it.

​DA: You surprised me with the sheep cursor that clones itself! What are some other ways you’ve coded surprise and delight into your designs (beyond Clone)?

SC: I love making things that reveal their whimsy and joy the more you interact and pay attention to them. On my website, I’ve embedded a bunch of objects (made with a library I made called playhtml) that change in real-time to everyone’s interactions so that it feels like a live digital living room—the lamp in the corner turns on and off, my name stamp spins, and a little monitor at the bottom shows you the colors of all the people visiting. I’ve hosted workshops with “cursor warmups” where the website shows everyone’s live cursors with their names and we respond to different prompts together like making a circle or playing tag. And I also create these Internet Sculptures that look like beautiful objects but reveal a website when you bring your phone to them. I love when something feels like it has a life of its own, and I think surprise is really important to that.

​DA: On your personal site, you talk about the concept of an “internet caretaker.” How can we all be better stewards of the internet?

SC: The thing that I think is easy to forget when we browse the internet with this disembodied cursor is that everything on the internet is made by us. Every website, every game, every word (perhaps with LLMs now, I’d revise this to most) was created and put there by a real person in the world. Everything we do (a like, a comment, etc.) leaves a lasting mark—the ripple effects will be felt by someone on the other end.

​When we remember this, it makes it a lot easier to help care for those spaces that we come across, especially ones that feel handmade, and to give out the imaginary internet points liberally. Take an internet walk, post silly videos with your friends, visit people’s personal websites and then come back to them a few months later to see how they change, support small businesses and independent artists (you’ll find that they also have the best websites), and leave a nice comment if someone makes you smile or laugh or feel inspired. It’ll make a difference to someone, somewhere. 🫂

THE CLONE PLAYLIST

(っ◔◡◔)っ ♥ Before you go… ♥

Don’t forget to follow Clone on Instagram and Warpcast!