09/02/2024 - Why I'm Here

Well, here I am. After resisting the personal web for years, I've arrived. I figured it's time to carve out my own place on the web considering how much time I already spend here.

The internet has become too sterile. The largely-available and often-used platforms that pretty much everyone is on have never really been that individualistic or customizable. They've always kinda been just a "choose your profile picture, write a 2-sentence about me, add your pronouns, and move on." That being said, I've only recently realize how limiting this is. I certainly didn't make this website for the sake of customization or anything like that, but that is a plus!

This has been a... weird year. A fun one, of course, it was my first year of college, but certainly weird too. During all the rush and commotion I guess I realized that I just... fucking hate social media? I know that sounds incredibly cliche, and especially ironic for me considering how much I'm on it. Every platform serves it's purpose, sure. Instagram is great to see what your friends are up to, Twitter is great to keep up to date with news or your fandoms or things of that sort, TikTok is great for... frying your dopamine receptors, I guess. Although everything does have its purpose, I realized that they're never really having their intended effect on me. Even just a year ago it was better, but there's been some sort of shift this year that has really been the catalyst for me slowly becoming disengaged with all those platforms.

Instagram this past year added a "suggested posts" feature, which throws random suggested posts on your timeline that it thinks you'll like. You used to be able to turn it off, but then they removed that ability. Now I get an endless stream of stupid videos with goofy sounds over it, which, I'll it admit, is very entertaining, but not really what I want to see on Instagram. But the caption will be a ChatGPT five-paragraph description of some random shit that's meant to trick the algorithm into showing it to more people. One that I see often is a summary of what the Tesla Cybertruck is (fuck that thing btw). Like... I downloaded Instagram back in the day to see trips my friends go on and maybe follow a celebrity or two, but now here I am watching a 480p video of a 7-foot man riding a unicycle into a river with distorted electronic music over it, with an AI-generated description that has nothing to do with the video. Like... Jesus man, that is not what I downloaded this platform for!

Instead of deleting social media, (because let's be real, that'll still be the best way to reach your general network in an easily mass-communicable way), I figured I'd use this site as a respite from all the ridiculousness going on over on the big social platforms. I have to watch what I post, on Instagram especially, because I have to worry about upsetting my widely spanning political spectrum friends, and I have to be sure not to make a fool of myself because of my student government position! It's just a lot of unneeded stress. So here I am, ready to be my full true self, no holding back, because if you don't like it, fuck you! I'm aiming for this site to just be a digital representation of me, in a true and unequivocal fashion. I hope my personality can shine through on here and that you enjoy your time spend on this kind-of-first-attempt at HTML coding. Peace!