Why?
I think, anyone who has been exploring personal websites for any amount of time will be able to notice that pages like this look pretty similar across the board, and touch on mostly the same topics.
Social media is draining, the internet is overflowing with ads and corporations trying their hardest to hook you in. Millions of dollars are being poured into making sure you're glued to the screen. It doesn't matter if you're miserable, as long as you generate profit.
It gets tiring. I don't think I'll be able to say anything new or insightful on this topic. I'm just a regular person who suffers from internet addiction which has been exacerbated by social isolation. There's hundreds of thousands of people just like me.
The reason for making a website is pretty simple. I discovered neocities, explored around, saw how much fun people were having and how much more peaceful I felt exploring this side of the internet, and decided to learn some HTML and CSS. And, here's the result.
My relationship with the internet
I don't have any history with the 'old web'. I'm too young for that. When I was born social media was already taking over. So, I was hooked from a very young age, which was extremely detrimental to my mental and physical health.
It has taken me years to realize social media has not contributed to my social life whatsoever. Sure, I met some nice people, amazing artists, found tons of useful information, but in the end, I'm an adult now, and I haven't been able to make any meaningful connections with other people, offline or online.
Social media contributes to the worst of my thinking patterns and obsessions, it has deteriorated my attention span significantly and I don't want to let it get any worse.
I've visited a lot of web pages for people with internet addiction. I can relate to a lot of stuggles people go through. The attention economy ruined my life. I want to escape the cycle.
Current state of the internet
I used to enjoy spending my time on DeviantArt. I would log in every day, look through everyone's art, leave comments, socialize and participate in groups and events. I felt happy using the website, even if it had many faults.
Then Eclipse dropped and using the website became unbearable to me and most other people I knew. Some stuck around, sure, but I couldn't navigate the website anymore. All the connections I made, gone. I couldn't keep up with any of the artists I loved to interact with. A big part of my life just kind of disappeared for no reason. Now, I keep my dA account as an archive or storage, but I'm considering deleting it entirely.
Sure, I could probably find a script that reverses the changes, but it wouldn't bring back the people who decided to leave. And who knows what the owners of dA decide to do next? I didn't want to put in the effort just to be another user in the statistics of people who decided to stay after Eclipse.
In a moment, after one bad decision from a corporation, it was all gone.
After DeviantArt dying, I decided to move to twitter. I needed to have some presence as an artist, because I wanted to make money off my art somehow. I was never an active user, but I still enjoyed interacting with mutuals and other artists on there. It was never the same as dA because of the algorithm and completely different way people behaved. But there weren't many other choices.
Even though I wasn't active at all, I found myself going on Twitter only to look for things that would upset me, make me angry, make me want to die. It almost wasn't conscious.
Social media promotes probably the worst qualities in people. So much horrible stuff is being put out into the world, because, well, posting takes no effort. It makes me think: would you (or me) still be saying these things if you had to go through the effort to make a whole page for it? If you had to think about your words for more than a few minutes, would you still be saying it?
Social media brings me great anxiety about people I shouldn't really even care about. I shouldn't care about what all these people think of me, I don't even know them. But I can't help it. Maybe that's just my personal fault, but I want to disconnect myself from that additional stress.
With twitter imploding, more connections gone, as well as a source of income. Many people are unable to leave Twitter because it's their only way to make money, or they need it for a job. So, they're forced to stick around until it really all crumbles down.
People are constantly shoved and pushed around, forced to go from site to site, but there's never a good solution for it. Replacements for dA and Twitter would sprout up, and die within months. It's pretty useless to look for alternatives anymore.
No matter where you go, sooner or later that place will be destroyed in the name of profit and the attention economy.
A website helps me keep things on my own terms. No one except me can push out updates or changes, I and only I decide what I see and from who, I'll never stress over followers, 'vagueposting', 'doomscrolling', likes, reposts, shadowbanning, being a 'content creator', keeping my profile active, etc.
I'm less likely to lose connections. A person's site can disappear only on their own accord, or maybe if servers go down. But it won't be the will of a coporation pushing out a change to improve metrics. At least, I hope so. I've really had enough.
I want to engage with people on a deeper level. On social media, you're just a username and a picture, a notification or a reply at best. It deteriorates the understanding of my own self. Who am I really? Who am I trying to be? What do I try to put out into the world? I want to use this website as a place to collect my own thoughts, memories, and passions. I want a place on the internet that truly feels mine.
The indie web isn't perfect, and has its fair share of glaring issues, but I hope we can work together to make it better.