I learned a lot about websites. But not why the fuck adding two dots to a specific link fixed this page. ANYWAY...
I spent a frustrating couple of months trying to find a good place to build my site. Fed up with not being able to customize my site exactly to my liking on Wordpress, Weebly, Wix, Squarespace, Carrd, Tilda, Carbonmade, Glitch.com, blot.io, (Now blot.im?) or Google Sites, I decided that the best, easiest solution was to just learn to code and make a site myself. Little did I know what I was getting into... This was not the easiest solution, but it was the right one.
In this age of centralization on the internet, I occaionally think back to a simpler time - the early 2000s. I was anywhere from 3 to 6 years old, and my mom would go on the computer with me and we’d look at pictures of unicorns. In lap. Granted, these years are relatively far behind me, but I don’t think this site was meant to sell anything. It was just a website with a number of pages FILLED with unicorn gifs and pictures. Each one was laid over a fractally-generated 3d background, like a long hallway made of glass spheres, or a dark painting of a fairy at a pond. One page played “popcorn” by hot butter as the cg unicorns ran in place through their endless loops. As a unicorn-obsessed child, I was delighted by the computer. It had so many things to show me. That site is long gone by now, I’m sure. I’ve looked. (But if anyone knows where to find a backup of it, please. Please. Let me know.) I went on to hunt and peck out “s p e e d r a c e r” into the keyboard at the age of 6 after my dad showed me his dvds. (The beginning of looking up things that I liked on the internet and certainly the first manifestation of my fan impulses.) It’s not worth getting into all the intervening years here, but - and forgive me, I need my rose-colored glasse sfor this - I know you feel it too, right? The loss of old youtube and stumbleupon and onemorelevel.com the best 404page.com and elfwood and that unicorn website and all those many websites we used to go to to look at things on the computer. There may not be any going back, but I can try to bring that spirit forward - and in today’s age, where the biodiversity of the internet has changed dramatically at the hands of social media. A part of me rages at the notion of becoming just another small artist lost on a big platform, buffeted by the winds of algorithmic changes or feature removal. Why not be an artist in a house that’s just the right size? I won’t be beholden to any digital landlord.* I won’t settle for changing my icon. I won’t compromise on my projection into cyberspace. I won’t settle down where anyone else can rearrange my house. This is my domain. So welcome to my house! On the shoulders of strangers and with a hand from friends, I built it myself. I hope I can inspire you to pick up a hammer.
I’ll give you a hand.