How this website came to be (part 1): Going small

Two years ago or so, I started thinking about my digital ownership. I don’t really know what the trigger was. But it was something that made me think to myself “Uh! What happened to the internet? What’s up with the over-centralization? Why is everything so shitty?”
I guess it was a mix of things: looking at my recurring spends, and realizing how much money I was spending on renting digital services rather than actually owning them; learning about tech bros saying or doing something obnoxious; and finally, reading Cory Doctorow’s piece on enshittification.

In a nutshell, the internet “enshittification” happens because digital platforms or services are (1) first optimized for users so they can leverage a network effect, then (2) they pivot to exploit those users for the benefit of advertisers (think data harvesting, attention monetized, opaque algorithms, etc.), and finally (3) the last squeeze is to maximize shareholder value. Then the company usually dies, and the cycle repeats with a competitor who gained traction during step 2 or 3.
This cycle has become the norm for the “Big Web”. In reaction, the “Small Web” movement has emerged, whose purpose is to give the internet back its human scale.

Some might say that nostalgia is the main driver for the Small Web movement, and I’d say that’s partly true, at least for me. I am old enough to remember what the internet was like in its infancy, and how simple (and wild) most of it was. Google’s first results actually gave you what you were looking for! And the websites you were reading through were written by passionate people, with the intention to share and spread their interests rather than being all about conversion, engagement, etc. You could stumble upon websites dedicated to super niche hobbies, or subcultures. Anyway, as I said earlier, nostalgia may be my main driver, so I might be misremembering things… However, it is my intention to curate this website the way I remember how the web used to be when it was “small”. This is my corner of the web, where I can express myself without worrying about algorithms, or peer pressure.

My first step was to move away from Wordpress. I never felt comfortable with it anyway. The user experience of creating pages, writing articles and basically managing my content felt bloated, and I was under the impression that it was always trying to sell me things that do not align with my intent. Here’s one example:

All in all, I feel like WordPress is trying do everything for everyone, when I want something that does one thing for me.

So, to “own” my workflow I’ve settled on this stack:

• Astro I came across the Astro framework when I was looking for a way to build a static website. It is praised for its good performance (little to no javascript), flexibility (it can deal with different frameworks) and its sites can be built and deployed on different platforms.
• Obsidian as my Content Management System. This is where I write, in markdown, my posts. These markdown files are mine to use on any platform I want. Because I’ve set my project’s src folder to be my vault, whatever I write in Obsidian is reflected on my project and ready to be pushed to GitHub.
• GitHub is where my project lives “in the cloud”. Even though I could self-host my whole project on my NAS, I’m still at the very beginning of my journey of reclaiming my digital life. Step by step.
• Netlify hosts my website. When I commit my changes to GitHub, Netlify automatically builds my website.

Some of you may think “Well, that seems overly complex when you could simply write a piece on Medium” and you wouldn’t be wrong. But, being involved in the whole process end-to-end brings me something: a feeling of control, a feeling of “owning” what I am doing. Something artisanal, and not industrial. I guess I get that dopamine rush when I’m learning how to tweak CSS or fix an SVG path, rather than hitting thousands of impressions. Does that mean that only tech-savvy people can engage with the Small Web? A couple of years ago, the answer would have been a strong “yes”. Today, the barrier to entry has been considerably lowered. More on that in the second part of this entry!