Why make a website?

Anyone that knows me knows my disdain for the current state of the internet has been growing in strength as time goes on. Of course there is a lot that contributes to this - tech grifters pushing crypto, then NFTs, now AI. Nazis absorbing online spaces like a lovecraftian hivemind. Leftist spaces nuking themselves with absurd infighting that does nothing but profit the ghouls we all despise. Said ghouls making enough money off our misery to single handedly boil the inhabitants of Earth alive. It's enough to make one deeply nihilistic. As a result, I find it both easy and understandable to long for prior days of sensory-overloading websites, Newgrounds flash animations and Cool Maths Games. The 2000s was the wild west of the internet, and anyone with a connection and basic coding knowledge could not only carve out a little homestead of their own, but find lifelong careers of fame and fortune when their work gets emailed in circles with engagement numbers that could replace Mark Zuckerberg's viagra. These legendary figures have become some of the most accomplished indepenant projects and artists of the 21st century. Minecraft, Toby Fox, Lindsay Ellis, Smiling Friends, all are people or creations that were forged in or as a result of this wild west, and it's particularly understandable that current artists will look back on these figures with great envy. They really did have it better, didn't they?

Stardew Valley is a game about a person crushed under the weight of modern corporate life who, after their grandfather leaves them a rural farmstead in his will, moves to the titular town to start a new life of of planting, watering, feeding, and occasionally shanking bats with a stick. It is a wonderfully absorbing fantasy that I frequently indulged in during my time working a corporate 9 to 5. Petting my digital chickens for the sake of petting digital chickens was more meaningful to me than 40 hours of my week. Building up my farm from an overgrown mess into beautiful hand crafted pastures is honestly what building this website has felt like. The trouble is, of course, Stardew Valley isn't real. The fantasy it's fans seems to think it sells is rather absurd. While abandoning the agony of modernia seems wonderful, inevitably there would be frictions that arise in what you replace it with. The game is not ignorant of this, the big bad outside world constantly crashing into the local's stories to ruin their lives in some form of greed, whether that take the form money, or love, or something alike. That said, I think this element of life in Stardew is ignored by its fanbase, including myself.

Nostalgia is one hell of a drug, and it can't be denied that I am one to fall for it. Hell my band Catstronaut is drowning in rose tinted glasses for the late 20th century. The days of old when out modern problems didn't exist. In the wild west we were free, we led more meaningful lives, we worked with our hands, and the old internet was just better. Of course, the wild west was violent, working the land mightn't be nearly as satisfying as one might expect, and of course web 1.0 had its own substantial issues. In fact, a lot of the problems i listed at the start of this essay have always been present online. Right wing extremism is absolutley not new here. There have always been tech grifters looking to make a quick buck from suckers with sci-fi sounding pump and dumps. Leftist infighting isn't unique to now, nor is it unique to the left. None of these problems are new, they may change shape to better suit the vessel but the taste is always the same.

So why make a website? And why is it so shamelessly in love with the visual aesthetics of Y2K?

Part of it, I think, is because this kind of nostalgia blindness does have some genuine uses when applied with great care and honesty. Wanting to return to the good ol days of working the land is a particularly potent vehicle with which we can discuss the increasing instrumentalisation of our lives. Persuing fantasy can help one understand their own lives better, and so this website could be considered a kind of roleplay of the kind of artist I want to be. Bizarre, esoteric, and a little bit baffling is my bread and butter, and yes I blame Eddsworld for that. What is important is that the roleplay be reflected upon as such - escapism is useful but when we stop thinking of it as escapism it will consume us flesh and bone and soul.

Another part is, of course, that there ARE some problems that are unique to the current moment. While the instrumentalisation of our lives has been occuring for centuries now, the advent of common use large language models (what grifters would call 'AI') and the way those tools are being sold seems to be the final frontier of the problem. While our attentions have been colonised for a while now, current technological developments makes it significantly easier for our tech oligarchs to achieve. While Nazi's were always here, they now have very real, very scary, and very violent power. I find it increasingly difficult to come to terms with the way my simple desire to make art and show it to people makes these problems worse. With every post I make on Instagram, Mark Zuckerberg gets more powerful, a power that he has proven to be more than happy sharing with the facists who would otherwise threaten his business. With every post I make on TikTok, I contribute a tiny amount to some teenager's inability to defrintiate lies and reality. While in the current climate I can't well abandon those platforms, as they are vital for finding new fans, I can do everything in my power to try bring people away from those places into a space that will properly respect them and their brains. In addition to all of that, I have very little control over who, how and why my work reaches people. Artists have little to no control over which of their works is given center stage on Spotify and other streaming platforms. There is no guarantee that your work will reach the people who have explicitly told platforms that they want to see it. I want a place that is my own, that I have complete control of, and that some rich guy somewhere can't delete with a press of a button cause they feel like it.

And finally, there is the most important reason I'm making a website. I'm an artist. I believe the meaning of life is found in the process of existance. Doing things yourself, simply because you want to. That attitude has quite literally made my career thus far. It's why I started writing music at 11 with no clue what I was doing. It's why I continue to make my own album art even though I'm not very good at visuals. It's why I'm writing a novel despite having absolutely no background in fiction writing. I'm going to solo develop a game someday, simply because I want to give it a go. Of course I'm building my own website with nothing but youtube HTML tutorials and a dream!

I'm an artist.

No algorithm, billionaire, or tech grifter can ever take that from me.

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