August 15th, 2022: Why I started A Personal Website
The first time I took a break from social media was in June 2021.. I had gotten into some nonsensical Reddit argument which ended up with another user making personal attacks against me. Needless to say, I needed some time away from the app just for the sake of my own sanity. Give it another month, I would delete Instagram for similar reasons, but replace internet strangers with (former) very close friends…..I never downloaded either app again. Just recently, in fact, I deleted every account, save for my personal Instagram which I never post on anyway.
Last summer, I gained a strengthening interest in social media’s relationship with the world, and how the internet caved in under its’ weight. I was frequenting countless dead forums while in the process of jailbreaking both my Nintendo DS and 3DS, and I was in awe of how substantial those old forums seemed to be. Compared to social media, there appeared to be a messier, less standardised element that were exemplified in those sites.
Another factor which affected my decision to take a (now permanent) break from social media was the amount of influence it wielded over the LGBTQ community. Full disclosure, I’m a gay man, and this won’t be an intolerant type of rant about all how gays are neurotic, self-obsessed, and hypersexual; I consider arguments sch as that to be incredibly unproductive and counterintuitive, so rest assured, I’ll spare my readers from that. Back on topic though, I felt as if pages with a focus on LGBT identity were almost automated somehow. Every page I came across (Reddit in particular) always hosted content with an underlying motive to catch the attention of gay men, lesbians, or trans/nonbinary individuals. It’s like that across all social media, really.
Content doesn’t exist because a person put them there, it exists because it was funnelled into an algorithm with the intent of keeping users fixed on their screen for as long as possible. Furthermore, this content also seemed to influence LGBTQ folks in tremendous ways. Real-world activism was neglected in favour of meaningless discourse (For example: are asexual people REALLY a part of the community? , and online identities become so potent online that they seep into one’s own conception of who they are, regardless of how tangible it is to express in the real world. All of this contains a mission to bring the user further down into their digital cocoon, where they become shackled by the chains of their own echochamber, which is strengthened by every swipe, like, or tweet.
That summer, I grew my simple distaste into a near-obsession. I started reading up on the Dead Internet Theory, and I grew my political stances around being extremely critical of social media, or the internet in general. It progressed further into my real-life activity, when I began buying CDs just so I wouldn’t be reliant on Spotify and the streaming ecosystem anymore. I began monitoring screen time, with the goal of keeping it between one and two hours per day. To this day, I still listen to music through CDs, and I still keep my phone use under two hours.
Am I rambling? Bragging about how well I was able to escape from the spell that Silicon Valley had cast on me? Well, apologies for that.
As as zoomer, I've noticed a great amount of dissonance from my fellow zoomers. There’s a super strong interest in reviving the culture of the 2000’s (that may be a millennial thing more than a zoomer thing, I can’t tell), with near worship of pop-culture properties and aesthetics of that time (Hot Topic is making a killing off of this). Concurrently, however, we’re willing to stay engaged with social media, allowing ourselves to remain prey to a predatory industry. Clients such as Discord provide an experience of 00’s IM chats, but the average Discord user is beyond terminally online. We voice criticisms of social media, and everything that term entails, but we don’t put intentions to act behind our words. Every critique of social media ends up as posturing; If I show that I’m aware of the damage social media has on us, then I must be doing better than the uneducated masses, right? To bring this back to my generation, Gen Z is the first generation to grow up entirely online, and it’s moulded our generation, since its’ grip is stronger than any other force we’ve experienced. Our first experience with sexuality was through internet pornography, whether it featured real people or fictional characters, in situations that were tailored to arouse us. Our adolescence was experienced through Tumblr, Instagram, Snapchat, Amino, Twitter, and a plethora of others which featured even more damaging algorithms. Our ability to read and think critically have been damaged or destroyed altogether by Twitter and the algorithm which prioritises more engagement than is healthy for a human mind. And the next step for all of this is Tiktok, which hosts the majority of Gen Z culture now. Gen Z has been conditioned into acting as instruments for the acquisition of money and data by tech companies.
All of this is why I started a personal website on Neocities. I need space, and I need time. Space away from the content feeds which only crowd the mind, out of an idea of who one is. I need time to grow into the man I want to be, in isolation from online influence. The modern internet progresses at a breakneck speed and I’ve accepted that I’ll never be able to keep up while also maintaining my sanity, health, and goals. When you're grown addicted to anything, you have to break away from it entirely in order to heal. Browsing Neocities isn’t compulsive like the rest of the internet. I know I can’t see everything which Neocities has to offer, but none of the content is going anywhere. Webrings feature near infinite links, but I can browse them at my own pace. Surfing the internet is an activity I can set aside time for, rather than a compulsive urge which pops up during every moment of boredom. I can produce content which I want to show to the world, without pressure to keep people updated or else they become worried. I want to help build a healthier internet, and supporting Neocities is a way of doing that.
The internet is a hole designed for you, but you can escape whenever you wish.
- Benny Finn.
Last summer, I gained a strengthening interest in social media’s relationship with the world, and how the internet caved in under its’ weight. I was frequenting countless dead forums while in the process of jailbreaking both my Nintendo DS and 3DS, and I was in awe of how substantial those old forums seemed to be. Compared to social media, there appeared to be a messier, less standardised element that were exemplified in those sites.
Another factor which affected my decision to take a (now permanent) break from social media was the amount of influence it wielded over the LGBTQ community. Full disclosure, I’m a gay man, and this won’t be an intolerant type of rant about all how gays are neurotic, self-obsessed, and hypersexual; I consider arguments sch as that to be incredibly unproductive and counterintuitive, so rest assured, I’ll spare my readers from that. Back on topic though, I felt as if pages with a focus on LGBT identity were almost automated somehow. Every page I came across (Reddit in particular) always hosted content with an underlying motive to catch the attention of gay men, lesbians, or trans/nonbinary individuals. It’s like that across all social media, really.
Content doesn’t exist because a person put them there, it exists because it was funnelled into an algorithm with the intent of keeping users fixed on their screen for as long as possible. Furthermore, this content also seemed to influence LGBTQ folks in tremendous ways. Real-world activism was neglected in favour of meaningless discourse (For example: are asexual people REALLY a part of the community? , and online identities become so potent online that they seep into one’s own conception of who they are, regardless of how tangible it is to express in the real world. All of this contains a mission to bring the user further down into their digital cocoon, where they become shackled by the chains of their own echochamber, which is strengthened by every swipe, like, or tweet.
That summer, I grew my simple distaste into a near-obsession. I started reading up on the Dead Internet Theory, and I grew my political stances around being extremely critical of social media, or the internet in general. It progressed further into my real-life activity, when I began buying CDs just so I wouldn’t be reliant on Spotify and the streaming ecosystem anymore. I began monitoring screen time, with the goal of keeping it between one and two hours per day. To this day, I still listen to music through CDs, and I still keep my phone use under two hours.
Am I rambling? Bragging about how well I was able to escape from the spell that Silicon Valley had cast on me? Well, apologies for that.
As as zoomer, I've noticed a great amount of dissonance from my fellow zoomers. There’s a super strong interest in reviving the culture of the 2000’s (that may be a millennial thing more than a zoomer thing, I can’t tell), with near worship of pop-culture properties and aesthetics of that time (Hot Topic is making a killing off of this). Concurrently, however, we’re willing to stay engaged with social media, allowing ourselves to remain prey to a predatory industry. Clients such as Discord provide an experience of 00’s IM chats, but the average Discord user is beyond terminally online. We voice criticisms of social media, and everything that term entails, but we don’t put intentions to act behind our words. Every critique of social media ends up as posturing; If I show that I’m aware of the damage social media has on us, then I must be doing better than the uneducated masses, right? To bring this back to my generation, Gen Z is the first generation to grow up entirely online, and it’s moulded our generation, since its’ grip is stronger than any other force we’ve experienced. Our first experience with sexuality was through internet pornography, whether it featured real people or fictional characters, in situations that were tailored to arouse us. Our adolescence was experienced through Tumblr, Instagram, Snapchat, Amino, Twitter, and a plethora of others which featured even more damaging algorithms. Our ability to read and think critically have been damaged or destroyed altogether by Twitter and the algorithm which prioritises more engagement than is healthy for a human mind. And the next step for all of this is Tiktok, which hosts the majority of Gen Z culture now. Gen Z has been conditioned into acting as instruments for the acquisition of money and data by tech companies.
All of this is why I started a personal website on Neocities. I need space, and I need time. Space away from the content feeds which only crowd the mind, out of an idea of who one is. I need time to grow into the man I want to be, in isolation from online influence. The modern internet progresses at a breakneck speed and I’ve accepted that I’ll never be able to keep up while also maintaining my sanity, health, and goals. When you're grown addicted to anything, you have to break away from it entirely in order to heal. Browsing Neocities isn’t compulsive like the rest of the internet. I know I can’t see everything which Neocities has to offer, but none of the content is going anywhere. Webrings feature near infinite links, but I can browse them at my own pace. Surfing the internet is an activity I can set aside time for, rather than a compulsive urge which pops up during every moment of boredom. I can produce content which I want to show to the world, without pressure to keep people updated or else they become worried. I want to help build a healthier internet, and supporting Neocities is a way of doing that.
The internet is a hole designed for you, but you can escape whenever you wish.
- Benny Finn.