Posted 29/1/26
I decided to write about my reasons for making a website, so in the case someone were to ask me about this in the future, I could point them over here.
Creative itch
I like creating things from time to time. I just find there is a beauty in making something new exist from essentially nothing.
Also, I believe there is a benefit in having a long-term creative project to work on. I already have a few worldbuilding projects, but sometimes I want to do something more computer-related, hence a website.
Algorithmic consumption
Modern social media are purposefully engineered to be as addicting as possible to keep users glued to the screen, endlessly consuming filtered slop content. I myself have already wasted many hours mindlessly scrolling, and decided it’s not worth it.
So I decided to contribute a little less to that environment by creating a website. There is a lot more I could talk about regarding personal websites and censorship avoidance, but that would be out of the scope of this article.
Learning opportunity
I like doing things myself and wanted to learn something new. I’ve long wondered about how the internet works. More specifically, what exactly is a website. Making one of my own answered the questions I had and gave me a new kind of appreciation for the simpler, more personal content on the internet.
Anemoia
Coined by author John Koenig in 2012, meaning nostalgia for a time or place one has never personally experienced.
The late 90s to early 2000s are generally regarded as being the Wild West era of the internet, with a grand majority of the content being user-generated, including things like personal websites, blogs and forum posts. I was born in the early 2000s, so at the time I first got unsupervised access to the internet, this era was already in its final days.
Why a blog?
Writing things down tends to be more difficult than just keeping them in your head, which forces me to organize my thoughts better.
I’m not actually good at writing, mind you, and I haven’t written much since high school, but I treat this section of my website more like a personal thought-repository than something produced for an audience.
Cringe?
Why are you still here then? No one is forcing you to stay. I personally think that having a website one can call their own is kind of cool and retro. A website doesn’t need to be an online storefront or a bloated corporate business card to be “legit”.
Call to action (billions must try)
Making a website is really not that difficult. A simple website is, at the end of the day, just a folder with some text files. If you ever thought about making one, I would definitely recommend it. You can go to landchad.net to get you started or just use the rest of the internet, there are plenty of resources out there.