I'm a Happy Website Proprietor

I unplugged for a few days this week and returned to a whole lot of people pissed off about waffles. It was, of course, nothing to do with waffles per se and everything to do with some seriously tin-eared comments from members of Bluesky’s leadership team. I’m not rehashing them here, but the whole episode served as yet another reminder of the brittleness of social media.

The race to scrape, squeeze, and extract as much revenue as possible from online spaces and users has left me wary and frustrated. I’m constantly playing whack-a-mole to opt out of having my words, photos, music, and work history strip-mined for LLM training or auctioned off to advertisers. The modern internet operates on the illusion of consent, burying the true cost and conditions of participation deep inside Terms of Service documents.

If I think about this too often or for too long my eye starts twitching. What do you do about this situation?

This year I decided to concentrate my efforts on building up my website and making it fit my purposes. I stopped sanding down my edges and took control of my own distribution. I manage every bit of this website and I can move it wherever I like if any one of the tools I use to run this operation no longer suits my needs. It means I have a persistent online home that does not depend on a particular platform’s whims.

I also realize that by prioritizing online independence I am potentially sacrificing the elusive, intangible benefits of “discoverability” or “networking” that other platforms promise. There was a time when the network benefits of putting your work on a social media platform were significant and valuable; I think those benefits are now greatly diminished, if not completely exhausted. After 20+ years of online citizenship I’m dubious if any platform that runs on modern web revenue models offers a good experience for the average user. While this might be tolerable if you’re using social media to keep up with your friends, the situation is intolerable if you are aiming to create and distribute your own work in a meaningful way. I’ve seen too many people make too many devil’s bargains cultivating engagement on platforms that went down in flames.

I now describe myself as a Happy Website Proprietor. When I post here I sometimes feel like I’m running a seaside bakery in the background of a Studio Ghibli movie. I’ve made a stubborn commitment to my own home cooking, so I’ve set up shop in a way that suits me. Some weeks I’m serving Gargoyles spoofs and other weeks I’m piping up figure skating commentary. Sometimes it’s a bit of fuss to bake things from scratch that I could otherwise buy off the shelf, but I savour the trouble because the process is more satisfying. When I head out with my field recording kit I am more conscious of the work required to capture, shape, and share what I encounter and how I might transform it by my own effort. Embracing my role as Happy Website Proprietor has created room to appreciate what I’m creating and why.

When I find myself getting angry about the latest bit of bad news I remind myself that I cannot singlehandedly debunk or react to every idiot online. What I can do is demonstrate what other worlds and ways of being are possible.