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.
I try to check in on old coworkers and friends, aggressively liking their 3 week old posts. But as you know, very quickly, the capitalism takes over, and it either tries to convince me to buy something trending that no one on the planet needs, sucks hours out of my life with addictive junkfood content, or feeds my existential dread about the impending whatever-apocalypse.
When you're an artist, it's worse. It reminds me just how much more successful I could be if I was committed to hustling around the clock.
Look at this other artist with hundreds of thousands of followers! And look at you with your measly 300. What do you expect when you only post once every 7 months...
It's not sustainable to devote your creativity to appeasing these platforms. I wanted to become an artist because I love the process that unfolds, and the way I can get an idea out of my head and into the world. Instagram forced me to focus on the results and the numbers. I've had a taste of virality on TikTok... It's uncomfortable.
Not just that, but the knowledge that every bit of all freely uploaded artwork is being scraped by bots without our consent. We put all of this hard work into making something we're proud of, only to have it ripped off and mutilated by tech companies. It's totally baffling to me that people think that there's any fulfillment to be made by producing fuckloads of art at breakneck speeds. That's NEVER been the appeal for me. The fulfillment comes from the resulting therapy of expressing myself. Art helps take some of the pain of being alive during this weird time in history away. It's a way to stay sane.
So that’s it, I decided, I’m getting off the major social media apps. Not just removing the app. 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. It just stinks of bootlicker breath.
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 I love that it's still here.
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. I believe in you.
Thanks for reading.
Love, Fanny
