Making a website that no one would see and that no one cared about was easier 30 years ago.
After spending a few days putting work into this website, it made me reflect on the origins of my interest in creating things on the Internet. Like so many of my hobbies or interests, it never propelled me into a professional position but served more as a creative outlet for other endeavors; never taking the plunge into utilizing those skill for anything other than posting my writing or just thoughts in general.
Things didn’t really take off until I was about thirteen and had been granted the privilege of going to a public school for the first time since 3rd grade. I was totally out of my depth socially. When you spend so many pivotal years in a school that has in total about 200 kids in K-12, it’s a tough transition going back into the machine that is public school. It didn’t help that the junior high I was attending had just been built by a company that mostly did state prisons. You could tell that the blueprints had only nominally been changed. It was a zoo. The sheer insanity of kids outnumbering the faculty was something I remember on the first day. They moved as an ocean, a force of motion unto themselves, shepherded from class to class by the currents of the waves.
I had a few friends by mid-semester, and they were working class kids like me. The difference with me was I lived in a house that had a computer, and more importantly that computer had a modem. That modem, while interrupting any phone calls, opened one up to a vast world never before imagined. I chatted with people all over the planet that first year of the internet, something I have not done since. I don’t know why I am so against the idea of talking virtually, or more corresponding, with people I don’t know. I think it might be because I doubt their existence inherently and prefer face to face interactions now. But that year, I was fully immersed in the idea of connecting with people on the web. A kid from Netherlands and I had an e-zine called “Hawkzine” where we would write up fun reviews of computer games we had played or looked forward to playing. We did a few issues of that until it dropped off the list of priorities.
And of course, I had a website. The first really established one I had was called “Acid Reflex” and it was hosted on Angelfire. I can’t remember the details of what exactly I wrote about, but I’m sure it was corny stuff about my budding political beliefs or just my thoughts on society at large. Even though it was a mess, I was very proud of it and spent a lot of time on it. Back then one of the cool things you could put on your site was a counter. This thing would count your page views, and anytime it ticked up, I got excited that I was reaching people, that what I had to say was out there for others to read. This counter thing must have taken me days to put up there, because I remember digging through page after page of learning how to write html coding to get it to work. That was the thing about making sites back then, you didn’t have some program to click and drag things, it was all straight-up written in notepad.
Days – but mostly nights – were consumed by me learning this skill, which, if not for my discovery of girls, booze, and weed, might have become the foundation of a very successful career in website design.
When the rest of the world came by my page and clicked through, the little ticker climbed higher, and I thought I’d tell my friends at school about this cool thing I was working on. They could not have cared any less. I remember specifically one of the first comments (and this came from a kid who really liked me) was “What the hell is a webpage?”. I tried to explain, but it was pretty useless as the internet was not gaining fame outside of circles in the tech world. None of them could see how cool it was. Even more, the majority of them agreed that there’s no way anyone would ever care about the internet, and it was just a fad.
I remember specifically one of the first comments (and this came from a kid who really liked me) was “What the hell is a webpage?”
I wasn’t dismayed by their disinterest. But I was a little hurt when I tried the same spiel on a girl I liked and was met with a look of absolute bewilderment at every word of my pitch. Noticing how I was flailing, my best friend at the time leaned over and with his curled snarl informed her that he was learning to skateboard. This peaked her interest immediately and though I can’t remember a thing about this girl, I will never forget that moment of being chucked aside for the skater guy. They did go on to date a bit, and it got about as messy as seventh grade love can be. Good for them.
Over the next few decades, I had a succession of different sites, mostly promoting my poetry or music I was working on with other people, but nothing very serious until this site. So much has changed since then. I don’t use a notepad for design anymore, and most everything is handled by CMS or CSS or some other jargon that would still bore the cute girl in class, but she’d at least have an idea. Still, as much as my skills might have improved, it is difficult to take the leap into really digging in and learning it as a skill. There are definitely parts that I should learn, that would benefit me, but when I settle down to really get my head around stuff, I lose interest fast. The time it takes, having an analytical mind, or just giving a shit about it in general is difficult when there are more creative facets of my life that warrant the energy spent.
I’m glad that the kids working on their own sites these days have the communities that they do. I’m glad that instead of being shunned, we as a society have gone on to see that what they’re trying to create is important. Good for them.
