+Shadows in sheep's clothes, +lead us to the gallows, +to the place before my garden +where lies a freshly-dug hole. + +For although my soul quite often haunts +the school where I last belonging sought, +my childhood memory is blank, +tabula rasa, greasy smeared blot. +Something happened I cannot recall, +cannot excise from tangled Yewiffe, +inside the church where under bright lamps +I sweated in so-called sanctuary. + +All I comprehend, all that I know +is that there's a ragged hole +deep inside my weary soul +that begs for a sword, +a spear, a lance, some other blade +coated in holy fire that shall never fade +to put me to death in the name of a lord +I would never in my will bow my head to. +A voice with a body I swore off in my youth +deems it romantic, fated, that I subsume +my will to his and accept my place +in a pearly and golden-gilded tomb. + +Mother, +will you forgive me after I'm gone? +Will you take these slivers +and remnants of songs +up to the hillside +where derailed my life +and let me one more time those trees haunt? + +Oh, who am I kidding? +You never gave a damn about anything I ever wrote +unless as proof that against *someone* I was sinning +and needed to be punished for crossing a line +my brothers could cross as they pleased. + +That's all I ever was in your eyes, anyway: +just a pretty doll to dress up and display +as proof that you could keep something alive. +I became old enough to think for myself +and in favor +of my brothers +you pushed me aside +but demanded I alone keep up the regimens: +face sliced, breasts bound, jaw forcibly bent. + +And if you could, you'd drive nails through my hands +so never again could I write of the pain, +silenced, perfect sacrificial lamb +in the image of a Son +who deemed all "Other" and "Man". + +I could never in a god who hates me so believe. +I could never impale myself on the altar of femininity, +so your hands itch to instead order cut down my favorite tree +to build this gallows. In the wind I could be swinging, +that child again, joyful, carefree. +The wind carries the crow forth and my last words echoing: + +Do you love me now, Mother, +now that I'm your martyr? +That you've forever silenced my voice +that wanted to ring so loud? +Do you love me now? ++ ]]> +
An introductory paragraph to a poorly-researched blog post that desperately wishes it were a manifesto. A manifesto, a call-to-arms (even though the social circles who write these invariably tend to be anti-gun), a hastily-woven myth about the loss of freedom on the Internet, capital I or not. A capital I, an assortment of individuals, an early Internet of personal webpages full of blinking GIFs and tables as layout and "Under Construction" banners. According to the myth, this was a place full of individuals expressing their freedom and individuality until the Big Bad Corporations came along with social media and the websites disappeared. That is, until one day where apparently some of those people previously sucked into social media remembered that HTML existed and went from sharecropping on a social media platform to sharecropping on a shared hosting platform.
-I find it hilarious that I see so many "revival of the old internet" manifestos that claim to be about individuality and creativity and then invariably regurgitate this myth, if shuffling a few of the details around here and there. What exactly is so creative about remaking the same Geocities-inspired layout for the billionth time? What is so humane about creating webpages almost incapable of being navigated by screen readers and keyboard-only input mechanisms and other assistive technologies? (Accessibility isn't only for the blind, you know.) What is so decentralized about all conglomerating on a handful of sharecropping sites: Neocities, Ichi, Codeberg Pages...?
-Online companies have always sold your data. The Internet has always been a collection of walled gardens. Online advertisements have always existed in some form. Yes, advertising has gotten worse with its omnipresent tracking, and social media networks are still for the most part non-interoperable, and, well, anyone who's been online in the past decade knows Facebook is practically shorthand at this point for collecting and selling user data. But the world of the online has improved in so many more ways. Most "normies" who've begun to give even a single shit about their privacy know about the Tor Browser and, even if for the infamous YouTube adverts, what a VPN is. Hosting a website is no longer reliant on having a static IP address and money to purchase a domain, or, if one is using peer-to-peer software like Freenet, even a persistent connection. I can access the same websites on my shitty rural ISP's connecton as someone in an affluent area with Google Fiber or whatever can instead of being constrained to whatever my ISP's walled garden has to offer. Hell, you can talk on the phone and use the Internet at the same time, and it doesn't take several minutes to load a single image! (Well... maybe it does for me, since apparently my brothers have been using so much bandwidth that now our ISP is purposely throttling us.)
-Having a website is not revolutionary. Making a Geocities-esque landing page that never amounts to being anything other than a placeholder because one got bored with it and abandoned it or a Carrd or Linktree knockoff because one ran out of space for "link in bio" does not help "freedom" or "creativity" at all. A shared hosting company or a VPS provider is not necessarily more freedom-oriented than a social media profile in terms of what can be hosted: the Taliban is apparently allowed on Twitter if they follow the site rules, but several of their websites have been shut down. Some Twitter account somewhere making beautiful art - despite the stifling corporate interface they have to use to interact with the site (and even that drawback is mitigated via third-party apps and interfaces) is doing far more to make the Internet a beautiful and fun place than some half-baked cookie-cutter manifesto written by a person who apparently just discovered that their browser can go to websites other than those operated by GAFAM.
-There is no need to "revive" the web. It never went away. It never stopped growing. There have always been personal websites and people living outside the zeitgeist of whatever social media site happens to be the most fashionable at the moment. If you're going to proclaim yourself the vanguard of the "internet revolution" or whatever, then act like a leader and lead by example. Put down the savior complex and make something worth spending bandwidth on.
- ]]> --23 directories, 135 files +23 directories, 136 files