I’ve gone through maybe six personal websites. A lot of great domain names have gone to waste. Each iteration of my portfolio has self destructed before any good use could come out of it. It’s mainly because I can’t justify why I have a personal site at all.
I have no published work (beyond some articles in my college’s newspaper), no academic or professional authority, and no large following on any social media platform.
There’s no unquenchable desire for a blog nowadays either. American society has dumbed down into preferring the short, quick, and fast over the slow, deliberate, and careful. Observing this online has increasingly depressed me. Be honest, when was the last time you read a blog?
Exactly.
Blogs themselves have been sutured into the global project of algorithmitizing. I’ve met many Columbia students who jot down their thoughts on Medium and Substack only to be fed through a slew of filters, preferred categories, SEO keywords, and ideological spectrums, maintaining a readership that is anything but diverse. I hence chose to build my own site because I want complete virtual control over my posts. I don’t want it to be algorithmitized by the whims of some big tech billioniare. I guess I also want the three semesters I spent getting a minor in computer science to mean something.
Anyway, I’m not maintaining a schedule or actively seeking to say something unique, critical, or funny. I read in a syllabus for a class I skipped a lot that writing is a reflection of our thinking. I have trouble sleeping, and I tend to overthink after 9pm. To remedy this, when I overthink, I will write here.
Anything could show up, but most of these posts will be about pop culture (movie, tv, comics), history and my academic life, or in general things that piss me off. I am easily susceptible to rage bait.
Hell, I’m writing with the dumbfounded arrogance that people will actually encounter and actually read what I post.
Until then, this is basically a digital diary.
Cheers,
Ayaan