blog & website in the age of containerized socials
Just having a blog and website and no social media is admittedly something I am in a very very sturdy bubble in. I am so deep in it at this point that my default state is somehow assuming that everyone else is like that, too. Unintentionally! I'll catch myself looking for someone's website, or I am convinced asking for someone's e-mail address is totally normal. I'll admit it, I have become blind to how outlandish my online life has to look from the outside.
Makes me want to do a little evaluation how this has worked for me so far and a little advice, especially for any fencesitters or people who are just curious that I am yet to meet.
website
What motivated me to create a website? It was a big post on Tumblr about Neocities a couple years back, actually.
I wanted my own digital home away from social media and feeds. I had arrived at a point where I wanted to post and create and push the limits on profile design that social media has, without having to deal with a feed, recommendations, showing up in search, likes, and addons to posts by strangers. I just wanted to be visually alone or in a very small space online. I was fine with being an island that sees other islands from afar. I rejected wanting to perform for others, gaining followers or likes, seeking engagement, gaming the attention economy and going viral. It might as well have been a public Dropbox and Pastebin in one, and I think that's how I ended up treating my online presence even now.
I think having your own website is cool, but might not be for everyone in the way I or many others do it - no website builder. I enjoyed tinkering with it, learning HTML and CSS, and the freedom it gives me. I was able to do a lot creatively and it really captured me for months. After a lot of fiddling and trying out and having a ton of website designs and versions, I'm intent on keeping it how it is now.
What I mean with "it is not for everyone" is if you want to just have somewhere to dump stuff to, it's probably a hassle to keep it updated. I know some people will tell you: "No, no, it's all very easy. You just have to do it with Hugo, Jekyll, 11ty..." and that's the devil talking ;) If you're new to websites and CSS and HTML and you're just used to click "post" on a platform, these will be kinda hellish for you and just drive you away.
There are also people who encourage you to selfhost everything and just rent a whole server - maybe a bit too much for people who just want to switch away from social media. Website hosters with a little more handholding like Neocities and Nekoweb are better for a start, even if you don't own the server - that also means you don't have to worry about uptime, bots causing increased costs, possibly domains and more.
If you want some of both worlds, I guess Carrd or Strawpage could be a good compromise or beginning. You can also just have a website on Bearblog, but I'll talk about blogs further down.
Another pro is that there is no lock, no walled garden. When you make Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, X, or Substack your digital home, the people you send your profile to have to have an account and be logged in to view almost anything and it's getting worse by the day. If not, they are annoyed by popups, by accidental referrals to automatically opening the App Store, ads and other shenanigans.
My website most likely isn't blocked or banned anywhere, doesn't have annoying popups (maybe my JS terminal modal, at best), no ads and isn't harassing you about making an account or signing up for a newsletter. If you are annoyed by these too, you can stop making accounts anywhere that uses that bullshit and be part of the internet that is freely accessible and not bloated with distractions and trackers. How cool would it be if you gave someone a link and they can explore you, your art, your interests and whatever in the color scheme and arrangement you desire, instead of a grid with a fadeout and popup at the bottom where Meta begs for more data?
I prefer to use my website to host anything Bearblog doesn't let me host here or that doesn't fit the blog. Too big files, file types not supported, my terminal, my silly little browser games and some secrets. It hasn't always been like this; my website used to be the main hub you'd have to go to to find out almost anything about me. But convenience struck again, and it makes sense that I'd gradually (even without clear intent) put more effort, time, text and pictures into something I'm actually more active on.
As a final thing, I just want to say: Your website can just be about anything. It can be about you. It can be a linktree-esque thing to your other projects. It can be your portfolio, or be your own little wiki about a hobby you love, or a fandom shrine, or another niche interest, or your public diary. Websites aren't just for services and freelancers who sell something. I always get asked if I am self-employed when I say I have a website, and that's a sad testament of what the web has become.
blog
Why have a blog? I just always had one, with a short break of a few years.
I know blogs have this feel of having died out, or of people who blog for money, and it's really not like that. You don't have to publish serious essays like on Substack; remember that Tumblr, too, is a (micro)blogging website. "Blog" has such a serious feel to people when it really shouldn't; your inner critic might ask you what you have worth writing about and judgmental people might ask you if you think you're so important that you warrant a blog, but: Yapping online is completely normal. Just look at the flood of tweets and YouTube videos and Tumblr posts alone there are each day. You are in good company.
Vulnerability is different. Here, you aren't too sincere, too tryhard, too cringe for the feed... you aren't at the risk of getting clowned on and piled on as easily for not being nonchalant about everything (I cannot believe chalant is not a word!!!). I appreciate that leading a blog helps you find your own writing voice away from a feed's culture, lingo, specific memes and things that evolved with the restraints and incentives that these places have. You start to talk like yourself again when you don't have to make your content likeable to the algorithm.
I tried hosting a blog on my own website before, and I just can't recommend it. Others with a lot of experience can make it work really well and there are several great examples I can think of, but the amount of effort and technical expertise is not for me. I am glad that all I have to do I write in an editor, upload things, write some Markdown and CSS if I want to, and be done. I don't have to manage timestamps manually, or chronological order post list, or a tag system (which wouldn't work on my static site unless I manually update a list each time). I also don't have to fuss around with the RSS and Atom feeds. That's why I appreciate external blogging services. Some services, like Bearblog, even have Discovery built in, so you are still visible to others and not just an island yelling into a void.
Same thing applies here: My stuff is unrestricted, there are no unnecessary trackers, no ads and I can style the entire blog and each post how I want to. I can make them short or long, I can make a photo post. No weird character limits, no essay split into threads, no photo limit per post. There is no automatic detection falsely flagging my posts and pictures as harmful or sexual and my account never gets restricted or banned by automated decisions. There are no bots in my comments because there are none. When I have a problem, I can either tackle it myself or there's an actual human responding to my issues. All of that is already better than social media platforms.
If you're annoyed by having to create threads to go beyond the character limit and everything else going on on the feed, why not just create a blog? It's obvious you want to write something bigger. If you really care about engagement, you might be interested in the concept of POSSE, where you write on your website or blog and just send the link out to social media. At least if another platform goes down or limits your account, you still have your posts.
conclusion
And what is it all for? It's a time capsule. It's capitalizing on a way of expression that wasn't possible until very recently in human history. No editors needed, no applications, no publishers, no sending postcards around the world, no flyers. It's making a tiny little mark, it's saying "I was here too", it's finding your own little tribe online. All of these things would be severely hindered and risked on social media platforms. It's very normal and common for people to document their life, and we might not think too fondly of doing the same until we stand in museums.
I never feel negatively isolated online or like my things don't reach people - the Discovery is built in, there are plenty of blogrolls, linkgardens, webrings and lists to be on, and I can follow people via RSS feed, no matter if it's YouTube or BlueSky. If I need to go see something on X, I use Xcancel.com to access it.
I recently talked to friends about Instagram and it's pissing us all off that opening times of restaurants, events, and more are handled via Instagram when you cannot even see the stories or posts properly without an account.
I'm encouraging everyone to use other methods then; email them, call them to find out the information you're looking for; just show up and check if it's close enough. Ask that friend that has an account to check for you. Encourage the restaurant or festival to make a website all of their customers can actually access; make organizations and events have RSS feeds and newsletters; give people your Signal or your Discord if they ask you if they can have your Insta (I get asked this so often).
What I feel here instead of a social media feed is quiet, focus, having my own area, no pressure to perform, and no encouragement by the platform to reply or quote attached directly to my post with something intense that farms engagement. I can just be alone here if I want to and whoever wants to engage with that has to shoot me an email or be a big person and write their own post (or record a 1h long YT video, I guess).
I don't see any of that changing and I am happy the way it is. People can see me, keep up with me, look at my creations without us going "Do you have Peeb? I host my stuff on Peeb. Oh you only have Croog? Hmm. Maybe I could make a Croog. Or you make a Peeb. I thought about switching to Zortco, actually, because everyone I follow is going there..."
Ironically, it's like this post my wife sent to me:
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Published 26 Jun, 2025