On Websites
--27-03-2026--
(Please note: This blog post was the landing page of my website while I learned to code. It's been updated now that the real site is live.)
Like most authors I know with a website, I picked one of the usual providers and used thier cookie-cutter style, fill-in-the-spots-you-need template. I had a page for each of my books, an about me, and contact page (which mostly gave lesser publicists another email address to spam). Nothing 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.
I find the internet exasperating these days. Twitter is a disaster. Instagram is an endless ad-feed. Google is intnetionaly broken. And that's not even mentioning LLMs. If I'm going to have a website, I want it to be free (or as free as possible) from all of that. All this to say, I started this site to reclaim a small amount of space on the internet, seperate from platforms and social media. I have learned some basic HTML and CSS to make my website look like the Bulletin Board Systems I used back when the internet wasn't yet widely used; back when it seemed like the technology would produce something good.
I'll be adding pages to the site and plan to write something on the blog each week. Going to keep it loose and see what I feel like doing with the space. More to follow.