I deleted Instagram off of my phone again a few weeks ago. I won’t tell you the screen time that I was logging, but it was an embarrassing amount. It was the last of a series of social media apps that I’ve been slowly trying to disentangle myself from. I don’t want to keep coming back, but you know how it is...
The FOMO sets in again, and I wind up redownloading, wondering what messages I must have missed, and whether someone important has been trying to reach me. Every time I come back, it’s usually nothing but a stack of memes from my partner, and 3 other friends who usually text me on a regular basis anyway. Nothing important. I’ll try to eagerly catch up on what my old coworkers have been up to, or if anyone’s gotten engaged or pregnant. Instead, I get swept up in the cascade of the latest bad news all over the world to despair over. Or something terrible to come, some awful prediction about the future of the economy, about impending war, about climate change. I already know.
Social media apps have this way of making you EXTREMELY INFORMED and also guilty for not informing others. At least, my algorthim does. It knows I care a lot about politics, about the planet, and about what rich assholes are up to. And it pumps me with more frightening content, and an urgency to react, to try and get everyone around me to know this thing is happening, and what we as a collective can all do to stop it. Share, comment, boost, sign this petition, or donate to that charity. I am very susceptible to this type of marketing, especially because I have the means to do some things. But not everything.
I have a fear that by not participating in it any longer, that I’m placing myself under a rock, that I’m “hiding” from the news, and I’m going to lose out on staying informed and that makes me a “bad person.” This narrative comes from the platforms themselves, and the many people on them who are truly going insane trying to save the world with their likes, comments and shares. That shame has been the driving force behind my continuous return. It’s difficult to shake.
But my experience with social media actually feels more like I’m escaping from reality. I’d consume so much content, I’d lose time. I’d dissociate, and it would only make me feel so much worse about myself, and my life. The shame of not “doing enough” is warping me into a shell of who I want to actually be. It’s a manipulative, oppressive tactic to keep your eyeballs on the app, to buy more useless products (what the fuck is a Labubu) or find something else wrong about you that you need to fix.
The truth is, I do stay informed without them, I just choose when I have the capacity to take in something heavy. And lately, I just don't. And that's okay.
So that’s it, I decided, I’m getting off the major social media apps. Hard delete, no take-backs. Not off the internet entirely. Just elsewhere.
When I found Neocities, I was reminded just how much I love web design. With my job over the last 13+ years, I built websites on so many modern web builders, I forgot how much I actually love coding. It’s slower. It takes more time to figure out how to make it “do the thing.” But when it does, it’s *mwah* just soo satisfying.
My problem with modern web builders is, aside from the fact that they were always breaking, they’re expensive. I paid a monthly fee to show off my fancy design portfolio while I was job hunting. Once I’d get hired, I’d yank the whole thing down and bury it. I wasn’t going to use it again, because ideally, by the time I’d need a new portfolio, the contents would get refreshed anyway.
My problem with the traditional graphic designer’s portfolio is that it’s always so LinkedIn friendly. If you know, you know. LinkedIn is violently fake. And made much worse so since the rise of A.I. images and generated posts. It’s hell.
So when I decided to build this website, I wanted to build it in such a way that would keep me coming back to it. If I’m willing to waste X number of hours a week scrolling on Instagram, then I should be able to take that time and put it towards something meaningful to me.
This site design is inspired by scrapbooks, zines, and girlie mags. I think back to all the magazines I got in the mail when I was a kid, and I wish I’d kept them. They were splashy, playful, and consistently inconsistent. When it’s a website just for you, you do NOT have to treat yourself like a brand. You aren’t. You’re a messy, complex person who WILL change their mind, repeatedly. So that’s what this is. This is the kind of internet I miss, and what I think we can all get back.
I know, not everyone is capable of making a website like this. I’m only good at it because it’s my job, but I hope that by having made it, that I can inspire other people to give it a go. I don’t like letting people get away with saying that they don’t have the time or the talent to make something from scratch. That’s going to be true for anyone to varying degrees, and for some, it’s an excuse, for others, it’s an unfortunate reality. But you have one precious little life. If you have always wanted to make something, if you shit on yourself before you try, you will never find out what you are capable of.
Thanks for reading.
Love, Fanny
