I believe in an indie web.
The internet is great. We have more information and convenience available at our fingertips than ever before. All our friends are a text message away. There are a thousand platforms I could have used to instantly create a beautiful website or blog without writing a line of code.
So why did I make a personal site from scratch?
The IndieWeb movement goes by various names: Web Revival, Yesterweb, Small Web, Personal Web, etc. Almost everybody participating in it seems to want the same thing. We generally agree that the Core Web, also called the Modern Web, Web 3.0, or the Corporate Web, is bad for our brains.
Social media, once a bastion of connection, has become a capitalist machine designed to sell you things you don't need. The algorithm pushes sensationalist audio-visual content, chopped into shorter and shorter soundbites, to bait you with quick hits of satisfaction and rot your attention span. Marketing teams study the psychology of user engagement to keep you coming back for more. Nobody has any privacy. And everything kind of looks the same.
In short, doing things the hard way has become an act of resistance. Learning to code so I could build my own site from scratch reflects my personal ethos. Additionally, I believe that limiting who has access to my work rather than chasing the strategy game of social media analytics to make Number Go Up is a more satisfying community-building tactic in the long run.
Recommendation: We need to rewild the internet by Maria Farrell and Robin Berjon
In defense of longform text.
While I have nothing personally against audio or video content as a medium, I do believe the web's current dependence on both is worrying.
Over the past eight years of my life, nearly every single person I knew personally told me they struggle to read. I don't mean that they are illiterate; rather, they have difficulty focusing on longform reading for more than a few paragraphs. In fact, I only have two loved ones who have kept up with reading and supporting my written work!
I believe we are victims. Our society is designed to destroy our attention span. We are worked to exhaustion, then we have to do housework, and by the time that's done, it's just easier to play a video in the background while gaming than read a nuanced thinkpiece.
However, while people can't help what has happened to them, it is still a grown adult's job to take responsibility for themselves.
There is no time like the present to begin fixing your atrophied attention span. You don't need to tear through a 500-page novel in 3 days like you did back when you were a "gifted kid." You can just as easily start by reading for 15 minutes every day. Maybe even just 5!
All of the above is why this site is so bare-bones and (sort of) plain text. Part of my indie web philosophy is taking us back to a more text-focused web. Plus, a simple, text-focused site is more accessible and mobile-reponsive :)
Recommendation: You've been traumatized into hating reading (and it makes you easier to oppress) by Ismatu Gwendolyn
Also, go reread Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. No, I'm serious.