Comment by blueridge
1 year ago
I don't know, I've given up on following people across the web. They’ve all got a sickness that compels them to incessantly fidget with their sites: fonts, colors, designs, and About pages change almost weekly. And then they babble on about why they made those decisions.
It’s a garden, a stream, a worry board, a playground. It runs on WordPress, now Jekyll, now Hugo, now Ghost. No no, now it’s “handcrafted” HTML and CSS like the old days.
It's the same psychosis that prevents people from shutting up about their note taking system, their ideal journal setup, whether they should use a Moleskine or Leuchtturm, yellow or white paper, ruled or blank.
I don’t see a “cozy” or “small” web of independent minds on the Internet. I see a group of anxious and nervous and restless people trying in vain to assemble a Self and grasping for meaning where there is none.
If you’ve got a personal website, just leave it the fuck alone.
This comment is so mean-spirited... reading it made me sad. I'm allowed to own so little in this world, so how I present myself online is particularly dear to me. If you don't like my website, you can go find others. What does it matter to you?
I'm not trying to be mean, I'm just sharing an honest opinion and criticizing a widespread behavior that I've noticed. I've stopped following people because the "housekeeping" posts just kept coming. There's so much focus on digital structures, on the means by which they express themselves or engage their audience, on the colophon, that they forget to make a point or write about anything else.
I'm worn down by this kind of chatter, by the hyper-focus on the platforms and the tools instead of the message. It's the same thing with designer portfolio pages. They can't get off the treadmill and they're constantly tweaking their portfolio instead of settling on a good layout and letting their work speak for itself.
There's this endless frenetic energy that pushes people to search for phrases, labels, names, categories, definitions that allow them to rationalize their behavior and justify how they're spending time online.
Listen, I'm the OCD type and I'm guilty of this sort of thing, too. And every now and then I find myself obsessing over tools in a way that's unproductive and I have to stop and pull myself out of that headspace. There's an instant feedback loop to editing themes, messing with fonts, publishing a blog post (that no one will read) and so it's easy to keep going. And it's easy to waste a fuck load of time doing this sort non-work.
Anyway, I feel like I'm watching the progression of a most chronic illness that keeps people tinkering in an anxious state of mind, and that makes me sad. It seems unhealthy to me, but you can do whatever you want!
I've noticed the same behavior in myself, but I think the explanation is simpler than needing to dive into existential philosophy; our tools suck, and we haven't found the right combination of features to make a nice simple software system that people can use for their daily lives.
I still think something like Emacs or Leo is the way forward, the UI/UX just needs to be massively improved.
https://leoeditor.com/preface.html
This comment is kind of hilarious because I felt similar feelings which is why I took down my site!
Oh! I remember reading your "On second thought, I don't like blogging" post and nodding along. I think I've linked it a few times elsewhere in HN comments. We are aligned!
I'm quite surprised and honored that my words resonated :) since that post I've been living a more quiet, private, and a bit more happier life.