Homestuck uses the potential of New Media to democratize the creation of content and its access as well as allowing for a more interactive process of viewership. It's important to note that the context of Homestuck, the internet is not only used by its creators but perpetuated (it uses this context and immediately becomes part of it). Homestuck is the epitome of new media. In the words of its creator: 

“Homestuck is an illustrated, semi-animated story on the internet.  It is not a comic that just happens to be hosted on the Internet - it was specifically designed to exist there, to explore the potential of the medium, and evolve through reader participation.” (kickstarter)

Unlike other webcomics, Homestuck isn’t a digital version of an analogue counterpart, such as one panel comics, which superimpose text to images in the same way a 20th, century comic or a newspaper cartoon would. It instead uses the technologies of the Internet. a vast array of types of media as well as the social technologies that exist through the Internet. This social technologies being the different subcultures that have formed online; small communities interconnected with one another in the way high school students connect to friends in different districts. It is at the forefront of what Alan Levine calls "Storytelling 2.0", "The emergence of a new genre"(Levine, 41).

Through massive forums like Reddit or video sharing sites like YouTube, (and as a consequence of the proliferation of the Internet to millions of homes) Internet subcultures have formed, creating their own forms of humor, interaction and dialects. This humor and shared norms are prevalent in Homestuck. The constant but subtle breaking of the fourth wall (e.g. “Sometimes you feel like you are trapped in this room. Stuck, if you will, in a sense which possibly borders on the titular”) and the constant reference to Internet culture icons reflects the fact that the internet has become an inherent part of the identity of the viewer, there is no reality effect if it does not include the medium used. In Web 2.0, Alan Levine exemplifies this with the emergence of chain e-mails and urban myths propagated through the Internet, a digital version of the transfer of information via ‘word of mouth’; “The spread of urban legends by newsgroup posts and e-mail messages constitutes something akin to a body of folklore, building up within the internet.”(Levine, 44). This is the key part to New Media, specially when referring to the age of the Internet; everything in it is inherently dependent on its context and part of it, without this cyberculture Homestuck, Reddit and all other community would be devoid of value and without these sites there would be no cyberculture. For this reason Homestuck is different from other forms of content, it cannot simply be made and rest as a timeless piece but rather an extremely contemporary piece both the creator and viewers have to be knowledgable of the same culture for it to have value. Although this allows for a more personal experience, it has the drawback of losing the ability to, like most masterpieces today (the Mona Lisa, the David) be outside its context of creation.

An example of this "urban legends" are chain letters. 

Parodying the style of early videogames, Homestuck is clearly designed to be relevant, to make viewers feel 'in the know', a feature of the internet so popular, sites dedicated to explaining these cultural references have been made. The machine of the Internet and its emergent cyber-culture exists not just to display a message, but also to convey the context itself. After a couple of hours of reading, it becomes evident that the creators are not only aware of their demographics, but exploit this knowledge making reference to what would seem to be esoteric pop-culture references to an ordinary individual (but a familiar one to the average Homestuck user). This has an important effect; , it triggers a nostalgic effect for the childhood of the average viewer while simultaniously manufacturing this nostalgia, (which might not otherwise be felt). The idea of manufacutre comes from the fact that certain sociall objects might not even be related to a specific user but, by alluding to so many of them with the same tonality that expects people to 'get it; and appreciate it, an aura is created around those years making people appreciate things they might not even have experienced themselves. This shared knowledge which creates a cyclic effect is not just a feature of Homestuck but also a populat theme online. cyberculture. What this does is that it creates an engaging personal story by self-selecting the audience to those who can find Homestuck in the that is the internet but also understand all of these references. 

A common example of this nostalgia, is the seemingly universal nostalgia for the 90s found in many popular internet sites.

Homestuck, is told by images, texts and “chat logs” mostly. The user is given a frame on which a picture will appear, either with an animation or a still frame and a text that describes the actions taking place. Mirroring old computer games, in order to move to the next frame the user needs to click a link that describes an action, written with a ‘choose your own adventure’ format, but with only one option. In some cases, instead of a description of objects and events, a ‘chat-log’ is shown, showing a characters interaction with another via a fictitious instant messaging system. Some frames even allow the user to interact with the story, by playing mini games or entering text.