17 years ago, while staying with a friend, I decided that I needed my own website as a place to host the files for a step rhythm game project I was obsessively working on — that, and for discussion forums for me and some friends in that niche of the gaming community. That site is what page you’re on right now — xadara.com.
Over the years it would quickly evolve into the blog it has become. For me, blogging is the last remaining element of the world wide web that is still, in a sense, pure, to the original intentions of the web. Buried under the content management hell that is WordPress is textual information being presented with rich formatting, as well as audio / video integration where appropriate to create a centralized base for me to share information as I see fit — in this case, generally, my opinions on a subject or possibly my own personal retelling of an event. Regardless of their minimal at best academic value, this idea of sharing ones thoughts is what has always driven consumer use of the internet at large, and still drives it today.
Today, however, everything is all about social media, as it has been for an absurdly long time now. Your ideas only have value if they get a bunch of views, or likes, or whatever on whatever platform you choose. That is, of course, if what you make even has actual value — while there is intrinsic value in anything that’s made simply for the sake of entertainment, I’ve found the relatively recent trend towards short-form video content of 10 to 20 seconds in length where everyone is doing the exact same thing over, and over, and over, to be beyond mind numbing.
I won’t go into that rant here, but it suffices to say that at this stage I continue this site in spite of these trends. It’s not just because at this stage I’m an angry old man — in some ways I’ve always been that — but a matter of me simply placing value in informational content that isn’t hyped up, or meme filled, or, well, much of what you see out there today. I want information for informations sake — I want opinions for opinions sake, not because some girl with large breasts is talking in a cutsie voice going “uwu” and then talks about some tragedy in history (yes, that’s a real thing I’ve seen while doomscrolling through some short-form content.) Just give me an, admittedly bland, but informational video, or don’t bother.
But again, I’m basically a dinosaur online — a relic of a bygone era… but I’m fine with that. There are a million people out there just like me who enjoy more conventional stuff — are more, for a lack of a batter phrase “old school” about the way they use the internet. Hell, the fact the Bulletin Board System community is still as alive as it is says plenty about that — and while we’re constantly flooded with enough flashy content to make a rat on acid become overstimulated, some of us find time and ways to escape this chaos and take things back to a level of practicality that will never go away. Text just works. Easy to create content, easy to edit if need be, and honestly I could make posts to this site on just about any machine from the past 20 years if I really wanted to.
It’s just a better way for me to express myself online the way I want to. A place that have control over to a far greater extent than any social media could and would allow. A place on the world wide web that’s been mine for 17 years. Not some place I share with others, that my content is paying the bills for someone else, but for me to do my thing and make what little money I do earn from ad revenue go all to me, to be invested back into this insane nearly two decade long project that is Xadara — an idea of being true to ones self more than anything else.
Shit, I did that thing again where I just wrote stream of thought, rather than what I was planning on writing. Oh well, better content comes that way, I think. Certainly feels like less work when I can just let my fingers do their thing on the keyboard and not feel like I’m doing something wrong.
Now, if only I could get to writing more than one entry a week.