{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "canonicalUrl": "https://www.jacky.wtf//essays/2025/what-to-do-with-site",
  "description": "It used to be fun to write and publish for the Internet, if not a bit fulfilling. Now that we've collectively normalized the vacuuming of information for the sake of profit of a select few companies, what is the point of throwing things into the well of social media?\n",
  "path": "/essays/2025/what-to-do-with-site",
  "publishedAt": "2025-10-15T16:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:e2ctbutx6kya6si4if5ngjmm/site.standard.publication/3mniussyp2d2g",
  "textContent": "Not too long ago, I mentioned that I wanted to [refashion my site in a way that\nmirrored the things][1] I _want_ to talk and share about on the public Internet.\nI've had some hesitations on this nowadays, since non-consensual commercial\nInternet scraping has _really soured_ my want to continue adding things to\ntheir virtual fishing net of organic human-made content. The (potential) end\ngoal is to _automate_ the act of being connected to one another (if not make it\n_extremely_ difficult to figure out the difference between a person or\nmachine); something to be made into a premium experience. If not that, it's\na behavior that has folks moving into more private spaces like Discord (or\nnowhere at all). This has been made more clear with things like OpenAI's Sora\nand Zuckerberg's persistent want to bring more folks into the \"Metaverse\". I\ncan see why librarians have slowly come back into fashion as information\nresources for folks who want information and not an advertisement on the side.\n\nIt feels _a bit silly_ to be fixating on how one \"publishes\" on the Internet\ntoday: we've surrendered a lot of control to companies (not platforms) that now\nshepherd and curate conversation for the many people who use the Internet. Folks\nover the age of 30 can live in a bit of a personal delusion that the blog will\n(still) save us all — but there's more folks who are scrolling\nportrait-length versions of videos than folks who are trying to figure out how\nthe end of Game of Thrones went down from the books. It's something that\ncompanies have nudged us towards — not solely of their own will but from\nour want, as social creatures, to connect and be seen. This is what led to\nInstagram becoming the behemoth it is today and with TikTok following in its\nfootsteps with a refined (but crowded) interface that rewards people on a\ndopamine-inducing level for hitting the right button.\n\nI share videos on Instagram in its ephemeral content feed a la \"Stories\". This\nis something I do when the moment seizes me and I normally share articles or\npictures of things I'm reading. I'm a bookish person! That prevents me from\nfinding immediate value in getting back into video production to talk about the\nthings I'd want to talk about and adjusts the scope of what it is I'm trying to\ndo. This (false) paralysis of choice is _annoying_. So I'm going to declare a\nbit of bankruptcy.\n\nEschewing the Utilitarian Ideals of Protocols (or Platforms)\n\nI don't know nor do I immediately see the particular value of fixating around a\nparticular protocol and platform. Today, they end up being some sort of\nextension of a company's objective for market capture - ATProto included - or,\nif made into a project of sorts, the manifestation of a person's vanity\ncampaign. I don't completely agree with a lot of the stances of social\nnetworking as a solely a project of liberation or that it can bring us there.\nYes, we can connect (to a very limited degree) with folks on the platform\nacross borders. But as the experiment to cram as much of the spectrum of\nhuman expression into a computational model grows, the more difficult it\nbecomes to do so — the need to invent new behaviors of engagement. I also\nwant to highlight how these projects tend to exemplify the ideals of folks who\n_rarely_ have to deal with the extremism of corporate _or_ state violence (let\nalone interpersonal violence). I have yet to find a technology project on\nsocial networking that folds in socio-technological research on its impact and\nhow we can learn to mitigate it.\n\n[1]: /essays/2024/my-hub/\n[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sister_Outsider\n[db]: https://nyupress.org/9781479829965/distributed-blackness/",
  "title": "What I'd like to do with my website (and with the Internet as a whole)"
}