So yeah, I’m back. For good this time.
After a brief stint on Substack, before discovering that it had quietly become yet another social media app (yuck), I’m here again. And I intend to stay here.
Call it streamlining. Call it coming home (folks of the introverted enthusiast ilk managed perfectly fine for years in mostly-isolation from one another, dialling it back to that again feels so incredibly good). Call it finally learning the lesson.
Blogger was launched on August 23, 1999, by the San Francisco-based company Pyra Labs.
This template, this strange old machinery, this quiet little corner of the internet, still standing after all this time. Since 1999. Ancient by web standards. Prehistoric. Basically fossil record infrastructure.
And honestly? I’m happier here. I became a dad this year, so yeah. Nah. I’m not doing the social media thing anymore. Not the performance, not the noise, not the feeds, not the ambient judgement, not the invisible scoreboard. Man...
It is so quiet here...
I love it.
Not that I'm discouraging anyone, but if no one ever visited this place or commented, ever, I'd be truly happy with it. the quieter, the better...
If the internet is a big house, then blogging is the quiet room the introverts use to avoid the noise.
Facebook is some bad family argument in the kitchen.
Instagram is the loud porch.
TikTok is a pack of freaks on the roof.
Blogger, though? Blogger will outlast them all...
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| Blogger is even tougher than Helm's Deep. |
For me, there are five channels now (in order of preference):
- In person.
- Calls.
- SMS (not 'WhatsApp' or what have you. Actual Messages.)
- Email.
- Blogger.
The comments section exists...Whatever. Fine. But the point is the room. The page. The post. The archive.
Social media is over. For me, completely over.
If I ever log in again to any of it, including Substack, it will be 2,000,000,000 years too soon...
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| My post-1990s expression at all times |
Never again.
Everything out there about me can rot away. Wither away. Let it all fade into nothing...
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| Let it all fade away... |
I couldn't be bothered ever logging in again (ew) to tell people where I've gone. If you're interested, you'll figure it out. It'll act as a filter, if anything.
'If you find me, you're probably the kind of person who a) enjoys what I do, and/or b) is the kind of person I wouldn't mind knowing exists.'
I gave over ten years of my life to that whole environment, and I am done feeding it.
So what will be here?
In short: my irrepressible (alas) chronicling itch getting scratched.
That old impulse to write things down. To preserve things.
Free of all the judgement and weirdness of those not-to-be-named sites.
This will be a haven for re-sensitising to the madness...the utter madness...of what's become of the world, especially online,
I am SO going to make a shirt that says:
SOCIAL MEDIA DOESN’T EXIST (with 'WORK WITH ME HERE' on the back)
That is how fanatically against it I am now.
I would sooner chew gravel...
Anyway.
The Substack stint at least gave a hint (easy there, Dr. Seuss) at what I want to keep chronicling. As well as dreams/memories/ideas, it's:
- Quantumyth (which is my lifelong story-world thing, and which will probably become a book before it becomes the games I have always wanted to make from it.)
- Resonant (which is the pattern work, and which ties back into Quantumyth),
- Miscellabra (which is the design branch: shirts, objects, little visual ideas, like the one above), and
- Episteppe (which is the music, it's basically my wish fulfilment vehicle of 'what if so-and-so musician made so-and-so type of album?' completely multi-genre type deal)
Those are the four creative pillars of the table.
The fifth thing — and technically the first thing — will always be real life. Real life first.
Forever.
We are living in a real-life deficit. All of us. Too many screens. Too many feeds. Too many people performing a version of themselves to an invisible room that never stops asking for more.
Social media…
*agent Smith voice*
...is a disease.
And Blogger...
*tilts head*
...is the cure.
*Don Davis score intensifies*
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| The cureeee... |
Also, comments are disabled on this blog. If you want to contact me, you either already know me and know how, or you can do so directly at albertchessa.com.
