Why I'm Starting My Own Website: Returning to the Old Web
When you begin something, the hardest thing to do is just start. Maybe you have an idea of what you're doing; perhaps you don't. When you don't have anything more than a broad idea, then it really becomes an issue.
It should be obvious that I don't know what I'm doing here. This site is just a broad idea that doesn't have much form or function and—knowing myself—may die quickly.
I'm no writer; I can barely run my own life. I have no place thinking that anyone should care or read what I have to supply. In fact, I know that statistically, that won't be the case.
But that's the thing about beginning something new: Sometimes, beginnings aren't about anything other than just starting and seeing where things you. Sometimes, it should just be for yourself and damn the consequences.
What Started Your New Site Journey
That's a good question with a lot of answers. And it takes both some scene-setting and background.
As of this writing, it's December 2022. It's been three months since the disaster of Elon Musk's dumpster fire takeover of Twitter. I had been a pretty heavy user of Twitter for over a decade, so I wasn't particularly panicking about the whole situation. Social media companies generally are in the business of growth, and while Elmo had been threatening the return of "free speech" (a dog whistle for fascists and rightwing nationalists) it's not like he doesn't have a long list of failures to deliver on promises.
Like, yeah. It'd be a disaster. But it wouldn't be a total disaster, right?
Then the reins on the fascists got let off in a genuinely saddening fashion. Nazis were unbanned, anti-fascists were being banned, and hate speech rose.
Twitter has always been and will always be problematic, but now the volume has been cranked. So, it became time for an exit.
Going From Centralized to Decentralized
While the fires in the hellscape of Twitter were licking everyone's heels and making a move was obvious, you encounter the following question: Where to go now?
There is no shortage of social media out there. Anything Facebook (I still refuse to use their stupid re-branded name) was out for their massive breaches and privacy concerns. Competitors like Hive and Post have their own issues. Tumblr already had a bad reputation after their idiotic ban on nudity, regardless of whether they reversed that decision.
At the end of the day, all centralized platforms have the same problem. Any platform that relies on capital will always end up with the same issues that Twitter suffers from. They need growth and revenue. To get that, they need to sell ads and user data. I was mainly done with that whole model.
Enter Mastodon. At the time, it looked "twitter-like" and had the added benefit of being decentralized, which appealed. It had been pretty established and was the first place many people had started mentioning on Twitter as a place to go.
Even though Mastodon servers became crushed under the weight of people making an exodus, and it took me quite a while to even figure out how to join a server, I decided to post my little social camp there.
While I want to write about my broader experiences on Mastodon, I will save that for another post. However, I immediately found a more exciting place with interesting people interacting with you. People actually have conversations and are genuine. There are vibrant communities of journalists, TTRPG gamers, leftists, and enthusiasts of everything from amazing artists doing film photography to some of the best shitposting found anywhere online.
Why Make Your Own Website?
People on Mastodon are funny, engaging, and—most importantly—rekindled my interest in the more indie parts of the internet. It is a refreshing example that the internet keeps moving forward because of people, not platforms.
And that's the spark that got me thinking of what the internet actually is again. For over two decades, the internet has been defined by walled gardens that take and commodify your engagement for the rich to make a buck. Often, it's at the cost of your data and privacy.
It's important to remember that the internet isn't just social media sites and the algorithms that control your attention. The internet is you and how you interact with it. It's how you act, how others interact, and where you choose to interact.
If you use a platform to publish your thoughts that you don't own or control, you open yourself up to the problem that you don't own the distribution method of your thoughts. You're just renting that space to someone else.
In the case of centralized platforms, your rent is paid by your attention and engagement, which they monetize. Even in the case of decentralized platforms like Mastodon, you're still beholden to the server you're on. At the end of the day, you do need to (and should abide by) that owner's rules. It is their space, no matter how you slice the issue.
If you own your domain and site, you control what you post. While most websites will pose this as an issue from a capitalist perspective, I'm approaching it from a personal perspective.
I want to post the things I want, that I'm concerned about, and that I can publish and distribute however and wherever I want. I (or you) can control that aspect regardless of platform or distribution method.
From my first experience with the web, I was hooked. Not to date myself (I will anyway), but I started on Geocities back in the late '90s. I made a personal opinion site that specialized in posting my bad/wrong opinions. It never did anything, but the fact that I could go to a friend's house and show them my place on the web was magical.
Over 30 years later, you're reading this article on my personal opinion website. One that I tossed up with as little thought as my original spot, which has been (thankfully) lost to time.
If that's not a testament to having your own space on the web, I'm not sure what is.
