The internet is a cesspool. And here I am in the middle of it anyway.
I built this website, the first personal site I’ve had in decades, because I may need a job soon and I wanted to showcase to prospective employers some of the things I’ve done over a 25-year career eking out a meager living by writing words.
The last time I had one of these was at the other end of my so-called ‘career,’ when the internet was still in diapers and it was the coolest thing I had ever seen, endless and full of promise.
I learned how to write HTML, then some PHP, and got my hands on every design tool then known to man, mainly illegally. I put out site after site, each more sophisticated than the last.
Pretty soon I was building sites for others. Then I was building sites for companies. The combination being able to write a clear sentence and design and code made me a hot commodity. The internet was amazing back then, full of people like me, designing and coding things that made them happy, things that entertained and informed others. It was a whole new blank canvass and there were no rules dictating how to paint it.
But Capitalism ruins everything, eventually.
Now it’s just more ads, tracking and manipulation on a grander scale than humanity has ever known. Every click has to be ‘monitized.’
So gross.
But here I am, two decades older and gumpier than ever, putting out a website. And as simple as this one is, I still couldn’t code it myself. The language has evolved past my understanding. And frankly, the entirety of this site would be a whole lot easier and leaner if I didn’t have to use a bloated visual editor and a complicated Content Management System to produce it. I’ve made more complicated sites with far less code.
And every day since I’ve gotten this up and running, I get emails or other reminders that I STILL haven’t put out my first newsletter, or made any attempt to ‘monetize’ my ‘content’ or made room for advertisements. I haven’t ‘captured’ any user data, shamefully.
My name is Keith Brown. I’m a writer. And I have no intention of capturing any user data or monetizing anything.
I’ve built this site because I’m nearing 60 years old and I’m terrified of ever being fired –er, I mean “laid off”– and not already having some line on another means of paying my mortgage, assisting my adult kids, paying for my car, my heat, water and food.
I built this site because the Capitalism that curb-stomped the promise of the internet is honing in on my ability to maintain a living.
I know I’m not alone in sitting with this fear. I don’t have the inclination to look up statistics, but anyone older than 50 lives with the ambient anxiety that the bottom will suddenly drop out, leaving you to claw back into the job market where no one gives two shits about your experience.
The children, the kids in their 20s, live with this anxiety too. They can’t afford sky-high rent, food prices and everything else that makes independent living possible. They go to universities on huge loans they’re never going to have the means to pay back and enter a job market so unstable it makes a house of cards look like reinforced concrete.
On that cheery note, here I am. Putting out a website in a cesspool of ads, manipulation and unconstrained money-gubbing. Hopefully, I won’t add to the internet’s landfill. I’d rather just write some things.