Your web hostess is someone who loves South Park, animation, movies and various other things.

Tweek Bros is a personal project I created for fun and to archive things I've created, and maybe also to reminiscence things from my past. I've been online since the late 90's, but I've never seen myself as a "tech nerd" or anything like that. I've used the internet for creativity and to connect with other like-minded people, and I used to find it so much fun. I still do, in a way - but it definitely is different.

THEN

Back in the 90's using the internet was slow and expensive, but I was lucky the ICT company my father worked at offered him connection at our home for free on his work laptop. At first it was just my older brother using it, but since I always wanted to emulate everything he did, I also wanted to try it out. I was quickly captivated and fascinated by the idea of chatting with someone in real time.

I created my first e-mail account, "kenny_9", which referred to Kenny McCormick from South Park and my age that time. South Park wasn't a big thing in my country back then, but I had seen the episode on VHS and got obsessed with it. Obviously I was too young to watch it, and girls my age didn't really understand this whole fascination of mine with it. At least I was also very into Pokemon during the age of Pokemania, so I had something to share with other kids. But I was excited that you could find South Park and Pokemon related things on the internet, and I would have spent hours searching for it if my mother didn't need the phone (back then you basically "called" to connect to the internet, so that reserved your phone line). I also really liked horses, and back then so called virtual stables were quite popular. It seemed like many horse girls were also online.

I found out that people are making their own websites they "decorate" in their own style and share things that they like. Most of them were on Expage, and I wanted to create my website too. I didn't speak English, but my father helped me to get started and I had the English dictionary with me to translate the words. There were also people who wrote instructions in my language, and people were willing to help. My first proper website was a virtual stable type of place, except for Pokemon - a "Pokecenter". Basically you could adopt a Pokemon from the Pokecenter, and then you had to write a diary about what you've been doing with your Pokemon. It was very basic online roleplaying.

I kept creating many websites and had to develop some problem solving skills doing that, but of course adults didn't see it that way. In their eyes, I was just wasting my time... It was rare for people to be online that much back then, and people like me were referred as "no-life". The times truly have changed. Ability to do basic problem solving on a computer is rather needed skill in modern work environment now, though.

I also had some accidents that I find funny now: as a kid I didn't understand the concept of hotlinking, so I always hotlinked graphics from this older girl's website. Apparently many people did that, and she was pissed off. She kept threatning that if people don't stop hotlinking her stuff, she will change them into porn gifs. But since I didn't understand what she even meant, I didn't stop doing it. Then one day, I was proud to show my brand new website to my friends in the public library... And so many pornographics gifs were plastered all over the monitor. I think I'll never forget how mortified I was. But that's how I learned my lesson (and I'm not against using that method in case someone hotlinks my files).

After the world didn't blow up in y2k, people were moving to places like Angelfire or Geocities. You could do create much more stylish layouts there, so of course I also gave it a shot. It was also more complex than basic Expage html coding, so I didn't always manage to achieve the look I wanted. I also had this problem that I didn't really have any content to share on my websites, so I often just created the layout and then quit. I had "about me" page and some stolen Dollz and graphics, but that's about it. But then again, that's what I was content with.

I still created personal websites on Geocities in mid-2000's when I got into manga and anime. There were people in my country drawing their own online comics and sharing their art, and I found those people so cool. There was this artist who was drawing a Hellsing inspired boys love comic about some gay vampires. I think that was my first touch with boys love. Then people started abandoning their personal websites and moved to communities like Deviantart or Livejournal to share their art, and I was also unmotivated to keep going because my websites weren't very good and I didn't get any visitors. In late 2000's Geocities was officially dead, but I hadn't been using it for year by then.

NOW

I've been fascinated by Neocities for quite long time, but didn't bother with starting a new website. After all, modern social media was so convenient for a such a long time... But now I've finally started this project in fall 2023. Now that I'm older, I find it easier to do the things that were too hard for me as a kid. I find it interesting that there are now people over decade younger than me who are into the website era of my youth.

I chose Tweek Bros. coffeehouse as a theme because I love Tweek Tweak and unfortunately I am also addicted to caffeine. In the episode of South Park "Gnomes" Tweek Bros stands for a small family business that is portrayed as close-minded and silly for fighting against a big brand coffeehouse. It's been a long time since that episode and I'm not sure if Trey Parker and Matt Stone agree with that mentality anymore. There are lot of things I don't agree with my younger self either. But I like to think that this silly little website has similar vibe in the modern internet. You can't get meth here though, sorry!

I'm not sure if I should call this a South Park website, but that's what's on the menu for now. I still see it more as a basic "personal website". The aesthetic I chose is more oriented towards old school Japanese websites I used to browse for amazing art. Those worked both on mobile and desktop, and I wanted to create a mobile responsive website despite not doing that when I was younger (it was not necessary since we didn't use phones to be online).

Please note that English is not my first language so it's not perfect. Starting with a dictionary book to translate the Expage items, I learned English mostly from the internet, fan fiction and anime & manga.

The layout is based on this template. Many of the graphics are by Fool Lovers. The backgrounds are the default background images from Clip Studio Paint I've edited a little. Guestbook is done with Virtual Observer's comment widget tutorial.