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Why Start Your Own Website as a Non-Techie?
Posted: 13 December 2022

You wake up to the cat batting at your face to feed it. The automated food dispenser has broken down, again. Grumbling and with unfocused eyes, you place a plastic pod of coffee grounds in the maker and brew a lackluster mug of French Roast. When done, the little pod goes in the trash for a Chinese barge to dump in the ocean. Shuffling to the charger to check your phone and notifications, you hear your partner taking her benzos in the bathroom. After sniffing the dregs of milk left in the fridge, you pour two bowls of neon cereal in the routine of a childless relationship.

Everything neat, tidy, and in its place. All things pre-packaged and ready to serve. The apartment as it came lest you void your deposit. Your car a reasonably new econobox just like the others. Wake up, go through the motions, pay the bills, go to bed. Another drone in the machine.

Then comes vacation time. You and your partner want to seem worldly and decide to travel to a more wild place and see a new culture. A little thatched mud hut with solar pannels and satellite uplink are your home for the next week. Natives in stained and torn polo shirts weave a chaotic tapestry of life, community, and labor around you. Poor things. Poor, simple, backward things.

A queer rumble cathes your attention. Rather, the locals snapping their heads to a growling dust spot on the horizon catches your attention. As it draws nearer, you recognize the sound of a truck engine. Nearer still, hoots of a band of rowdy natives. Your hosts break into a panic and begin running. Rifle fire cracks the air overhead as the marauders bail out of the truck and begin sacking the village. Men beaten, potential slaves assessed, huts burned, valuables shoved in bags, women prodded to assess their childbearing qualities and potential as war brides. Your partner one of them with a look you have never before seen on her face. A lustful half-grin and eager willingness to be taken by a man. A man with an ancient savagery still burning in his soul. You hear her dusky laugh from deep in her throat as she is taken up by one of the band and carried back to the truck. As you consider protest, a rifle stock crashes into your skull and unconciousness interrupts.

The internet is full of sleek, vapid social media and soulless corporate blogs. It as more than its fair share of check-the-box influencer pages hustling for some ad revenue. All the "content" flattened under the burden wrought by terms of service. And it is all worth precisely the nothing for which you pay.

Sure - finding a host and building your own will take a little study, practice, and effort - but name anything worthwhile in this life which does not. It can always be revised and improved. Organised as you wish, chaotic as your whims desire, and made by your own hands. The files and writings all yours. You can save the whole thing in a folder and put it anywhere on the internet you desire with nothing more than a running server (rented or a little computer in the corner of your room) and something to type into an address bar. Moved, shuffle, saved, and as near permanent as anything on this mudball planet. No one consuming your content in a mindless cycle of dopamine dependency, but rather your site will have guests. Not patrons, no users, but guests as in your home. Because the site is yours and they are but visiting.

You should learn to wrap your writing and place your saved images in the simplicity of HTML tags and put your thoughts and interests out there. Anonymously or under your name. Simple brutalist HTML or start learning and copying CSS to slick it up as you desire. The whole site packable and protable and yours. You may lose access to a rented bit of server space or a specific domain name but your site can not be taken away. It can go right back up because it is yours, you are a man, and you will shout into the darkness before the bastards can ever get you down.

Last Updated: 13 December 2022