Index
1. What is this post
2. Collecting things and gathering pieces of information
3. My online experience on social media
1. What is this post
It has been a long time (5 months?) since I made my first post and this website
has been more or less abandoned ever since. I thought maybe it was time for me to
write about why I created this website, not only to a potential audience but mostly
to remember myself why I created this website in the first place, and hopefully
this manifesto-y styled writing will inspire me to keep writing and posting and
mantaining this website. So let's go.
2. Collecting things and gathering pieces of information
I have always been someone who collected things. Not things as in objects, more like I
would make a lot of lists of things I would like to read or know more about. Name of songs,
of books, even today I have a briefcase full of pieces of paper filled with lists.
But now I rarely remember those pieces of paper even exist, and speaking of which I should
organize my closet. But I disgress. The reason I rarely remember those pieces of paper
exist is because a large part of my habit has now moved to my computer. I have folders and
folders of unread pdf files. My download folder has to be reorganized once two weeks and
often there are files there I didn't even remember downloading. Saying my bookmarks are
currently out of my control is an understatement. My cell phone tabs grow exponentially.
The main problem is, because the internet has so much information, sometimes it seems like
I will pass the rest of my days collecting and classifying it, postponing forever the act of
enjoying it.
I know gathering pieces of information is a natural tendency to a certain degree. Some
people collect quotes (actually two or three of my bookmarked pages are quotes collected
by people on their personal sites, but again I disgress), and I have recently rediscovered
the concept of commonplace book, which appeals a lot to me. But for me, this tendency wans't
being fullfiled in an adequate way online. Gathering information isn't enough. I believe information
must be organized and incorporated in our way of living in a way that we obtain meaning out of it.
3. My online experience on social media
And I was dissatisfied with my experience online for a lot of reasons.
My digital personas were restricted to my Facebook's and my email's versions of the
real me, and even my email was and still is mostly used for college-related stuff.
I did a lot of web surfing and all, but I didn't have a place to talk about the
things I found, and even if I tried to do that on my FB, it doesn't take a genius to
see that FB interface is terrible for organizing and archiving stuff. Despite having
bookmarks, it just wasn't made for that. Profiles aren't mean to be visited, the
platform gives you almost no way of costumization regarding how the things you post
will be displayed, posts can't be easily found, and infinite scroll is something I
despise. Also, ads and memes. Don't get me wrong, I used to enjoy memes, but continuous
exposition to them made them lost their appeal to me. I still use FB, as I'm sure other
people do, as an obligation, in part because it is relatively easy to find services that
I may need or events I would like to go there, in part because it is my only contact left
with some people I am not in direct contact anymore.
In short, FB is not very good at giving people tools so they can arrange their experiences
in a way that they can get meaning out of them, in my opinion.
I felt I needed a way to centralize and organize the subjective aspect of my experience
online, as I used to do with lists and as some people do with diaries or commonplace
books, or collection of quotes, or creating playlists or mixtapes, or whatever, in a way
that I could create something part archive, part mean of self expression, that could
serve as a consistent representation of the things I have selected in my online searches,
otherwise they would only be lost in the continuous present of an infinite feed.
Also, having to write about stuff in an website could force me to visit my bookmarks
and read them in order to have something to say (I will always cite my sources).
When in face with a endless flow of information, I felt I had to build a dam, but none
of the plataforms I was using at the time offered me this possibility.
Hopefully, this website will be the dam.