Gemini is a [shitty](shit.md) [pseudominimalist](pseudominimalism.md) network [soynet](soynet.md) [protocol](protocol.md) for publishing, browsing and downloading files, a simpler alternative to the [World Wide Web](www.md) and a more complex alternative to [gopher](gopher.md) (by which it was inspired). It is a part of so called [Smol Internet](smol_internet.md). Gemini aims to be a "[modern](modern.md) take on gopher", adding some new "features" and [bloat](bloat.md), it's also more of a [toxic](toxic.md), [SJW](sjw.md) [soydev](soydev.md) version of gopher; gemini is to gopher a bit like what [Rust](rust.md) it to [C](c.md). The project states it wants to be something in the middle between Web and gopher but doesn't want to replace either (but secretly it wants to replace gopher). Gemini is for zoomers in programming socks, gopher is for the real [neckbeards](neckbeard.md).
On one hand Gemini may seem kind of cool but on the other hand it's pretty [shit](shit.md), especially by housing [SJW](sjw.md)s and, very stupidly, **REQUIRING the use of [TLS](tls.md) [encryption](encryption.md)** for "muh [security](security.md)" because the project was made by privacy freaks that advocate the *ENCRYPT ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHIIIIIING* philosophy. This is firstly mostly unnecessary (it's not like you do Internet banking over Gemini) and secondly adds a shitton of [bloat](bloat.md) and prevents simple implementations of clients and servers. Some members of the community called for creating a non-encrypted Gemini version, but that would basically be just gopher. Furthermore there also exists optional encryption for gopher, so the literal ONLY "novelty" of Gemini is FORCING encryption. Not even the Web goes as far as REQUIRING encryption (at least for now), so it may be better and easier to just create a simple web 1.0 website rather than a Gemini capsule. And if you want ultra simplicity, we highly advocate to instead prefer using [gopher](gopher.md) which doesn't suffer from the mentioned issue.
Noobs also often used **absolutely invalid excuses** for using gemini instead of gopher, such as:
- "I dislike the gophermap format, I like gemtext better". This is absolutely laughable, you can use literally any format to make sites on gopher as you can use literally any format to make webpages or gemini capsules or anything else. Just use a translator that you can write in like 1 line of [sed](sed.md). This is the same kind of people who say they wish they could write websites in Markdown instead of HTML. This argument only reveals someone has no awareness of computers.
- "I dislike how gopher looks, gemini pages look nicer". Gopher has no look, you can make it look literally in any way you want, probably with a 3 line shell script. So again this just reveals noobs.
