I've been getting back- and deeper than ever- into small/new/alt web, though mostly through a detour of getting really into interactive fiction. (GO PLAY "Type Help". Or, if psychological / unreality is bad for u, just. Go Play Something.)
(40 minutes later voice) Dear god, where was I.
Well, generally I'm back on the small web looking at all these incredible and cool personal sites and reading blogs and such and out comes that guilty prod, rememmbering this site. I Should Be Part Of All This, where's My praxis? I haven't touched it in ages and even when the thought last occured to me I shrugged it off: it's so old, it'd take ages to catch it up, ew, old art, who even rememembers html. I'd rather dabble at being some cool new person who makes Twine games, or just lurk.
But also, I'm thinking to myself, see, this is cool how this seems to be the Right sort of blogging for these people. I coulddn't do it because I blog second-to-second.
I neeed the immediate response and then immediate oblivion of whatever miniscule nugget of nonsense I rattle on Social Media. And after that kind of thought you kind of immediately have to double down on a quick BUT I SWEAR LIKE NOT IN AN UNHEALTHY WAY, right, but I'm a Thinking Person, right, so, Of Course I Examine That Thought Too. And that was a good idea- because it found the real distinction, and part of the struggle I had in making a personal site:
I have ADHD. My main interests and pursuits change rapidly, and when I'm engaged in them, I'm mostly engaged in them.
This isn't an excuse- I'm sure there's plenty of ADHD having webmasters. But I've never liked to take up precious Mucking About to Log My Activities. Diaries, Journaling, progress upkeep- don't tell my GP but I haven't been to one blood test since I started T two years ago. And as nice and absorbing it has been loading up my site and finding stuff I've forgotten about- I've quickly made half a dozen small upgrades- I was right in my prediction that I don't like having Two-Years-Ago Me on equal display to the world as Current Me, but would dislike even more to remove anything. My relationship to most of these things has changed, but they're still My Things, and really, that's the issue- Relation.
Yeah, ok, the impermenance thing was a lie. Or, y'know, "It is like that but that's just part of it. Social media is inherently social, dynamic- I hardly have Bloggy Intents when I wake up in the morning, but I can see what everyone is thinking, and have thoughts about that, I can weave my spin on their posts or share silently, and I know where to go when I have a thought I need to say- and what larger conversation it's going to be part of- and I can participate in that conversation, in that moment of it.
Le Formal Blogging is an entirely different pursuit. Of course people still engage it in new net tools, but they're usually Also doing reactive stuff.
A Personal Site Blog is a matter of Intent, of having something to say- even a momentary something- which you feel is applicable to the general state of reality and your full being a person, and then saying that, and just that, in it's box, maybe somewhat hyperlinked box.
It's a type of writing-to-publish, essentially. Essay-writing.
And the thing is- Webcoding has way too many fun options for diversion and expansion for me to ever even Want to pick a point and stick to it. I still haven't found the format and mode of it that is *right* for me- like every other medium, it's a process. But I know through negation this... Probably isn't it.
It's all about SPACETIME. I'm not very good at navigating it this way.
Would YOU let HIM do your css!?
SO..... I have no idea how this happened, but... cue:
It's fun, it's great. Again- I really relate and agree with a lot of the tenats of the web revival, and I recognize I wouldn't be aware of it, and related cool stuff, if not for the zeal and frevour of it's prolesterisers.
But I think the binary of Social Media = Bad Personal Web= good is silly. Acting like Personal web pages are an Equivalent Practice to social media blogs is disingagous, and saying that personal web is objectively superior and thus any function or need it lacks is Probably A Bad Trait anyways is not just disingagous, but complete baby-with-bathwater bull. There's an air of yuckyness in the way this kind of thinking regards Content Creation that isn't any less toxic than social media-
After all, the early web consisted of *plenty* of things. Mailing lists, chatrooms, forums, directories- There have always been people who primarily used infrastructure rather than built it, and this whole "Master Of Your Own Sea" schtick has some odd notions about individuality and, like, territory. I don't seek control for the sake of control!
Sure, more people should try this out- especially if they're trying to curate themed blogs already. And definitely everyone will benefit from engaging and seeking out independent web to interact with, cuz there's cool shit here. There's great possibilities. But the endless drum-march of MAKE YOUR SITE. MAKE YOUR SITE. MAKE YOUR SITE-
because you have a Site to make, or because you want to be part of the Glorious ingroup of the People Who Make Sites, and, like, Totally Own The Man?
You can use the web as Your journal, and if that's what you want, there's power in making it really, really *your* journal. Or
a portfolio- very useful and empowering if your art or writing is likely to deal with censorship, but again- not universally inherently superior to.... Not doing it. The Inverse to personal sites isn't 1:1 being collared by Mark Zuckerberg, but a wide set of options: being a member of a small web commmunity, privately lurking and reading the Revived Web, using and supporting a mixed variety of web forms, or... Touching grass.
I could make a site for all my embroidery projects, but- why. I have them at home. I upload some of them to my Social Media sometimes, when I finish them, but it's mostly to show a handful of specific people. If tumblr went away i'd reach them by discord, or email, or not at all.
And again- treating Webmastery as an art Over your other arts, or over other artists- like website making is an art to Sanctify the other products you put online in non-indie means, is. Weird. Twitter doesn't own my drawings, so putting them on my site doesn't make them any more mine.
Nor is Content Maker Hustle Culture spawned by the presence of a logo- the pressure to move fast young people experience is a result of the fast communication age, but now that we live in it, now that the cultural zeitgeist is out of the bottle, simply coding isn't going to put it back.
We need to make sure we're talking about this creation in terms of joy rather than status. I'm glad to say this focus is truly very present in the content of most manifestos- it's all v Post-Cringe, Anti-Shame Beginner Friendly "make bad art". But wrapping it up in the sense of obligation again is weird. 'Don't worry if the best you can make is a mediocre website you don't super like! It's better than having no website!'
well, yes, but actually, no. Prodcutivity is not my god. Tools are neutral.
You should love human lives more than you hate death, love minorities more than you hate bigots, and love creating a site more than you hate The Algorithm.
Sure, webmaking is a good creative endeavour, a fine art to learn, one that shouldn't be forgotten. Again, I like the medium- I just wish there was a bit more discussion of content over form, or- content and form both over Allegience. What are the strength's of the medium? The special, cool things that can be done with it? What do you have to say that you never get to, and especially, what do you have in you that this will provide the unique and right chance to?
Something, Something, Cultivating.
Apperently, I had.... this To say. Honestly- I think I really, really touched into these themes already with this website, without realizing it.
Sure, there are some of my drawings here, I made some mini-shrines, but- The most fullfiling project for me was my (fake) AO3 Tab.
It was a catharsis of a lot of years of frustration and- honestly? Shame about being the writing equivalent of a Sketcher and Dreamer and Serial Project Unfinisher. A way to share things that I haven't made, a way to lay down dreams to rest while also championing them, a chance to partake in practices like Naming A Fic and Setting Its Tags, a tribute to an archiving system and culture which I adore, and a tongue in cheek handcrafted artisnal web joke- look at the hand drawn tab logo based on website name! Awesome!
yesterday ANOTHER tiny answer to that blitzed in my mind. One thought that made me want to write A Post, except the context was kind of important to the thought, and it became This post, which keeps evolving itself still into a larger and larger and more- um. Ridicolous? Self Satisfied? Rebel-with-no-cause manifesto about a group I do believe in and whose choice for loudness I fully understand considering the cultural context? and the Thought keeps getting pushed further and further.
SO WITHOUT FUTHER ADO, THE THOUGHT:
When I was 10 years old, or thereabouts- some age where my sister and I still had matching holiday dresses- my parents got me a book as a gift for... something. Passover, I think. גלגולי לשון (Read: Gilgulei Lashon, tongue-rolling) by Guy Deutscher, a linguistics book. It's published in english under the name The Unfolding of Language; My childhood copy is a translation made by the original author, into his mother's tongue, and in the opening he admits-explains it's not exactly a translation as much as a rehaul, cuz a book entirely about language in a different language has a lot of different ideas to get through and examples needed to get through them.
I've been looking for a pop-linguistics book that makes me feel the same for the rest of my life, but as we all know, a kid's memory is hard to compete with. Honestly, I haven't leafed through it in literal ages; I really wonder how I'd look at it today, from the point of view of someone who's got some linguistic courses and capacity for philosophical discourse under their belt; It offers some very assured ideas about the most controversial topics in the field. But as a kid it was the most magical thing in the world; It was funny and creative but also Real, educational but argumentative - and the boundary and format breaks were very exciting for me as a kid. Charts for linguistics examples, when done right, can often feel like a game- the book has a chapter exploring the life and vocabulary of a caveman, in semi prose, iirc possibly even second person. It has a chapter that's a transcript of a fictional convention with characters and distinct personalities and quirks arguing, debating, presenting. Like plato's fucking symphosium.
Anyways. What I was thinking of, yesterday, was a fact from there that has sat in the back of my head rent free all these years, and comes up often, internally, including in yesterday's situation, but I feel like I never get the opportunity to Talk about, and really wish to tell- well, the internet at large. It's waited for a chance to come out too long- but on my own web page I can share it unprompted. My writing-linking style perhaps makes it clear I like phrase-formulas, speaking and thinking in refracted quotes, and this is a strange one.
In the opening chapter Deutscher gives the example of interesting structures in foreign languages- he introduces a very long compound phrase in, Turkish, I think, something that would take a different language a full sentence to put together. What he really focuses on is the fact that not only is this a compound- when you break it down, one of the "Aspects" of the sentence is translated from a GAP in the source syllables, that is- the absence of an element in a specific place has its own meaning, which Deutscher uses to demonstrate the Meaning created in a language is more than a sum of words. But I just really like the specific phrase he uses to describe the meaning of the compound. It sounds like it's an awkward translation to something that has a beautiful original coherence, Magically so, a glimpse into somewhere else and someone else's logical structures. But it's still also beautiful and legible on it's own. From memory:
אתה הוא אחד מאנשינו שלא הצלחנו להפוך לעירוני.
You are one of our people who we did not manage to make Urban / Into an urbanite.
Dear web revival movement: I fear I am one of your people who you have not managed to make into a Blogger- Yet.
But be sure- I am on a quest for things to make, and I am glad to have this tool for when I make them.
P.s.: First time Javascript!!!