I’m James, a half-Chinese half-Mexican millennial native San Diegan figuring out his way through life accompanied by the finest canine companion one could ask for.
As a child of the digital dawn, I grew up living online in the early days of home computing and web access, constantly sharing and posting publicly in pursuit of all the new personal connections and knowledge the internet revolution promised. It was easy to do when usernames provided all the anonymity needed. Things weren’t dynamically connected like they are now. Search capabilities & databases that could be used to narrow down a person’s identify and related information didn’t exist. Cookies and bots weren’t tracking/scraping our every action.
So as the internet shifted from an open global network of people and websites rife with potential to this current landscape of social hostility on corporate-owned platforms that are all being used to train their marketing efforts and AI models, I largely withdrew from online engagement—at best, a clutch of FB/IG posts every weeks (even months sometimes) as proof-of-life to peers I haven’t seen or spoken to recently.
But in the post-election disruptions to online spaces, I’ve become inspired by the decentralized federated approach this new era of social networking is skewing towards, a microblogging parallel to server-hosted websites, but also the user attitudes; over the last few weeks, activity on these services has largely been people praising how updated moderation guidelines and user setting options have made it so that any negativity is effectively drowned out by positive interactions and genuine discussions. Inspired to give online networking and interactions the same earnest approach I used to, despite the concerns over content usage, privacy, and potential unwanted attention that comes with the territory these days.
And inspired to return to old ideals, of building my own site to have a digital footprint I fully own and control.
Last Updated: Nov. 24, 2024