Like most authors I know with a website, I picked one of the usual providers of cookie-cutter style, fill-in-the-spots-you-need templates. I had a page for each of my books, an about me, and contact page (which mostly served to give lesser publicists another email address to spam). Nothing too fancy. I didn’t use it to sell my books, I didn't need the analytic reports that came with the site, and I certainly didn't need the storage space. So, when it came time to update the site and I looked over the templates, I started to think, What's the point of paying for this?
I had been reading Filterworld, by Kyle Chayka. The simplified thesis of the book: the algorithms used by social media and search engines are levelling the creation of content on the internet; creators are adapting to what will get hits, consciously and not, which is making everything kind of ... blah. While reading this book, I started to see the influence. At an open doors-style art festival, the installations were all in large, bold colours that looked good in photos of people standing in front of them. I do not think the artists were doing it intentionally, but the creeping, Instagramification of art was apparent. Everything looked kind-of the same.
Which brings me back to those cookie-cutter templates. The dozen or so options SquareSpace presented me had names like, Lexington, Bogart, or Oritz. They sound like they mean something, but are all just pretty same-y. Templates algorithmically smoothed into nothingness. And in art, in life, in websites, I am tired of this. The drive to algorithm led discovery is ruining the intenet, which I used to quite like. Twitter is a disaster I have long since quit. Instagram is an endless ad-feed. And Google just doesn't work any more. And that's not even mentioning LLMs.
All this to say, I am reclaiming a small amount of space from the algorithm through this site. I am learning some basic HTML and will have a clunky, poorly designed website that will hopefully improve as I learn more, but will at least be something I made. I think I'll have an old-fashioned blog (consider this the first post). I'll also add some pages about my books, my teaching, and whatever else occurs to me. I'll even just throw up links to things I think are worth reading. Honestly, I'm not too sure what will come of this site, I'm just going to post this and see where it takes me.
Do people still bookmark things? Bookmark this site, if you're interested. Update schedule TBD.
More to come, soon.