A manifesto of sorts; or, my love letter to the personal website

September 15, 2024

I've been a passionate website owner since I was 12. Which is crazy, because my first introduction to anything code or webdesign related was when I was 11 years old trying to figure out how to make text a different color on my MySpace profile. Oh, how far we've come.

But this isn't a narrative history about my experience with websites (you can read the docs for that.) Instead, it's to answer a question I haven't been asked before: why am I so invested in putting my knowledge, skill, and excitement about website design in personal websites? In a world of corporate and social media, what is the point?

Though I'm naturally inclined to cynicism, I always try to find a way to put a positive spin on things - not to delude myself, but rather to not fall into the mental trappings of catastrophization. It's easy to say that social media and technology are horrible and make us worse - but it's more nuanced and therefore more accurate to say that with the good comes the bad, and with the bad comes the good. I don't deny that a lot about how we interact with each other online has evolved into frequent patterns of parasocialism - I have been on both sides of this myself. And yet I'm still here; not only that, but I'm even more enthusiastic about personal websites, especially my own.

So this manifesto is not only about me, but for my sake - and why I even have a website in the first place.

The presence of social and corporate media has recently grown to dominance within our culture, as people. The system we live under, both socially and economically, is driven by commodification, the desire to succeed in wealth rather than in fulfillment. And yet through it all I can recognize a simple truth: that I am lucky enough to have the freedom to still find ways to express myself, fulfill myself, separate from that omnipresence. Though the world remains a part of my reality, I can still create my own: through stories and my imagination. Through designs that make me happy. And through websites.

And I'm such an advocate for having a personal website because of this: because I love putting myself on my websites; and I love browsing others', clicking through to read more about them, and admiring the pretty and creative things they make. I love seeing not only what people decide to put on their website, but also how they present it - how they present themselves in the way that they want. Though there's certainly a navel-gazey aspect of webdesign, it's a lot like dressing up to feel good - you're not doing it for other people, you're doing it for yourself and you know you deserve kudos for it. Like any other art form, owning a website is a form of self-expression and allows us to define our own humanity; and instead of pretending to be someone we're not for the approval of others, we can get to know each other through these uniquely chosen forms of self-presentation.

Personal websites are a relic of a trend from the past. Yeah, I had a Geocities (RIP) but being a younger millennial who learned HTML through MySpace and IMVU and Quizilla, I didn't know the true expanse of the network of personal websites until I was about 16. I already had my own domain but through the connections I had made, I went through the rabbit clickhole of affiliate to affiliate, website to website. Person to person. While the more extremely old school Angelfire-era websites weren't incredibly distinct from one another, there still was a unique spin to each one I came across. Some people liked to share their fiction, fan or otherwise. Others liked to share their art, or makeup, or handcrafts, or fashion collection. The people I already knew liked to share their graphics and designs and stories about their lives. And there were others who liked to share their recipes, their figure collections, their essays and philosophical thoughts, their loves or frustrations or hyperfixations at the time.

And the one thing all of these websites had in common - whether I thought they were well-designed or not, whether the things they shared struck a chord with me or not - was that they felt like they were done by the webmaster, for the webmaster, and no one else. No matter what anyone's hobbies or interests were, they shared it anyway, made a website out of it, because of their passion - not just for the website, but with the very human need to share that part of themselves. There was no reason to pretend to be someone you weren't. There was no hidden motivation to make some advertisers happy. There was no incentive to have a website that was addicting, that people wanted to come back to. It was just a website for the webmaster. And you would be privileged to have stumbled upon it; the website was not privileged to have you.

Like many people on the internet my age, I hate the enshittification of things that used to be free and fun. I refuse to rely on social media websites or apps that could disappear in an instant; and while I'm an advocate for the internet, I don't like that the more we as a society come to understand something, it gets ruined by capitalism seeping into it, no matter what. The beauty of a personal website, however, is that while they may seem to be "old school", they haven't died - not if we don't let them. There's nothing stopping us from making a website for ourselves, even if it gets little to no traffic. There's nothing stopping me from doing this just because I love it, carving out a corner on the internet, and planting a flag in it, declaring it as my own. You can leave or you can stay. But it's still going to be mine.

I got into websites for myself. Though I always thought of my participation as 'late' compared to the late 90s trends of it all, my fascination with personal websites never faltered, no matter anyone's skill, including my own. I once tried to pursue an education and make a job off my interest in computers and websites, but it wasn't long before I realized that I cared most about webdesign not when I was doing it for others, but when I was doing it for me. I like making websites that I think are pretty and am proud of, websites that represent me and my tastes and hobbies. Websites that showcase things I made, things I like. I used to be ashamed of my presence in fandom when I was deep in the website community, because I thought my fannish interests made me weird and perverted and immature, compared to the more objective sophistication of webdesign. But those were just my teenage woes - now, I know that much like webdesign, liking things fannishly (and pervertedly!) is a part of me. I love yaoi as much as I love coding; I love RPF as much as I love drawing a website layout and making it come to life, just the way I imagined. I love writing fiction about men kissing. And I love visiting my websites over and over again just to admire how nice they look.

That's what owning a personal website is for me: self-indulgent. And there's no harm or shame in that, because it allows me to be honest with myself and let myself be happy. That's also why I love seeing other people's personal websites: I like to see how other people express themselves in a way that makes them happy. Because more than anything else, I get to learn about the human behind these websites every time I come across a new one. I love meeting people through their sites, and inspiring and getting inspired by others' ideas because copying is a form of love. I believe that though machines certainly have the tendency to drive us apart, they can still allow us to connect with each other, better, in many other ways as well. The realm of personal websites is the wild west of authenticity, and I love being here. I love being a part of it, and contributing to it just by being myself.

And if you're reading this, I hope you can be a part of it too.

— aroceu

Further Reading:

to top • i'm a fucking webmaster • art credit

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