Social Media Sucks. I’m Making a Blog Instead.
So I figured for my first blog post on this site it would make sense to write about why I’m making a personal website in the first place. Any time I do something I want to make sure that I have good reasons to do it, since that’s what will make me want to stick with it.
When it comes to most major social media platforms, I’ve felt completely discontent with the experience of using any of them. I’ve tried out a few here and there, but I could never bring myself to want to post on them consistently, and consuming content on them would feel like I was wasting time. After hearing about a lot of the disadvantages of social media on people’s mental health and all the issues with the companies running these platforms, I went through the process of gradually deleting all of these apps off my phone. Of course I still use YouTube, which can have a lot of the same problems as other social media, but it still feels freeing to not feel the pull of needing to check Instagram or Twitter.
And this isn’t me claiming that I’m better than you or anyone else for not using these apps. To be honest, I find all these people online talking about how much better they are than 99% of people purely because they don’t consume content on social media to be arrogant and probably don't have your best interest in mind. This is more just about figuring out what I personally value and want to spend my time on, and I just don’t see most of these major social media platforms as being something I want to dedicate my finite time on this earth towards.
Making a website, however, does seem enjoyable and likely very valuable as well. Something I love about personal sites is that they give you much more control and customization in terms of how your site looks and the overall user experience of it. As someone who has always enjoyed making art and being creative, this is a pretty major bonus to me. Being able to look at websites that are actually distinct from each other is also just way more interesting, even if your website isn’t the pinnacle of graphic design I’d much rather look at that then the same profile layout over and over again. And in terms of the overall experience of viewing my site, I can make sure that people don’t have a ton of ads shoved down their throat any time they look at one of my posts. I think that advertisements and recommended sections can be distracting and annoying. Sometimes it’s fun to look at recommended videos on YouTube just to see if there’s a video on a topic that you haven’t heard of that might be interesting, but being bombarded with recommendations all the time is one of those features that can completely take you away from what you were even looking for in the first place.
The other reason why I want to start a website, and a blog in particular, is that it’s a very friendly format for writing longer-form posts. And what I like about writing is that it allows me to get a better grasp of my own thoughts on certain subjects, and then be able to communicate those ideas in a way that other people can hopefully understand and relate to in some way. Critical thinking and communication are incredibly crucial skills, and I would argue that writing helps you build both of them. While having other people read what I put on this blog would be wonderful, I can still live with the idea of me being the only person to see any of my posts because either way I’ll be helping someone, whether that someone is another person or just myself.
Going off that previous point, I would also argue that having a personal blog gives me much more freedom to mess around with ideas compared to most social media platforms, since to me there isn’t really that same pressure to have a nicely put together page. Social media as we all know is often about superficiality, sites like Instagram encourage people to post whatever fits their brand or the image that they want to convey to the internet. Personally, I don’t want to be a brand. I don’t want my life to be a performance, whether its for money or social validation. And if I’m not making money off social media then I certainly don’t want to make free content for massive corporations.
Speaking of massive corporations, as many people know by now a lot of the internet used to be fun, creative personal websites that mostly had their own personality and flair to them. Back then, companies didn’t have such a strangle hold on the entire web compared to how they do now. I see this sentiment all over the place online now, with people wishing they could go back to when the internet was just a bunch of silly webpages and amateur web developers having fun instead of just looking at the same few platforms and not even getting anything substantial out of using them despite the fact that we can easily get sucked into them for long periods of time. I honestly think there’s just no point to going on social media if it’s not enjoyable to use. Free time should be fun, not soul sucking. To me, the idea of writing a personal blog like this one doesn’t feel soul sucking, instead it’s something that I’m actually excited to work on that’ll hopefully improve my writing skills and allow me to share my ideas with others.