Why I Write

Some time ago, jumping from one corner of the IndieWeb to another in search of something good to read, I found Lazy Bears. I liked it right away and added it to my feeds.

A few weeks ago, while reading it, I noticed a typo that broke a link I was about to open. I thought: why not write to Hyde, the author? I would appreciate it if someone told me about a problem on my site. So I sent an email, and shortly after I got a reply. Hyde asked if I wanted to be part of their interview series.

The series is based on Pitchfork’s Over/Under. Each guest gets five topics, which can be anything from a technology to a habit, and has to say if each one is overrated or underrated. I said yes immediately, it sounded like a lot of fun. You can read my interview here. In short:

• Git — underrated
• 1Password — overrated
• ImageMagick — underrated
• Spotify — overrated, these days
• Calzone — overrated, a panzerotto is much better

There is one more rule: each guest answers a question left by the previous one. From Forrest, I got “Why do you write?”. My first answer was much longer than the readers would probably have liked, so I sent a shorter version. This is the full one, which I wanted to share.

Why do you write?

Great question, and a hard one to answer briefly, because there are several reasons. For the main one, I need to go back a bit.

I made my first website, my first presence online and so my first bit of content, more than 25 years ago. It’s sad to say that out loud. Back then, the web was still a space for pioneers. At least from where I stood, it felt independent and incredibly free. You could be creative in a very simple way and share your passions and interests. I honestly don’t remember why I started. It was about making something of my own in a space that was still new to me. Over the years, I’ve always tried to keep a small space of my own, a little garden online.

Then, as we all know by now, things changed. Forums were a natural evolution of that space: places where you could write alongside other people. MySpace was an in-between step. You got a box and could build whatever you wanted inside it, which made it the easiest way to have something like a website, but inside a fence. After that came Facebook and Twitter, which normalised the way we express ourselves and create online. Everything turned into social interactions and likes. Content got shorter and shorter, to the point that we struggle to read long pieces, let alone write them.

I’ve always been a big fan of email. Maybe it reminds me of letter writing and something from the past. Now, with messaging apps, everything is short sentences and almost direct speech. We think less about what we want to say, and we reflect less.

Lately, I’ve felt the urge to step away from all that. I haven’t used social networks in years¹, apart from passively browsing a few niche subreddits that interest almost nobody but me (Reddit being the heir of the old forums, after all). I haven’t posted anything in years. But I still wanted a way to communicate. Partly for myself, as a kind of recap: in the last few months I’ve started writing about my travels², to remember what I did and saw. Partly to share my experiences in case they’re useful to someone, which goes for my technical posts too. And sometimes as a form of closure for certain moments in my life.

I’m really enjoying writing at the moment: getting ideas down, revisiting them, and knowing that someone who has never met me, and never will, can read my point of view. That was always what fascinated me most about creating things for the web. In the end, creating for the web became my job, and I keep doing it.

There’s another reason. To me, blogging today is an attempt to go back to the origins of the web. The mainstream web is becoming more and more corporate, owned by a handful of companies and platforms that are swallowing all the creativity. The content is nearly always the same: short, consumed quickly, and rarely worth thinking about. These companies used to be the counterculture, and now they are the mainstream. People used to create things simply for the joy of it. Since content became monetised (think YouTube), most people no longer create for pleasure. Some still do. But most do it for income, chasing strong reactions and engagement to keep people coming back for content that is often low value. So writing becomes something old-fashioned, and a small act of rebellion against that normalisation and commercialisation.

Maybe I’ve got a bit carried away philosophising. But I’ve been really enjoying the small web lately, and everyone who still keeps their own space online, whether it’s a creative website, a blog or anything else, as long as it’s free from the big players. Keeping the independent web alive matters.

I could say a lot more, but I don’t want to lose focus. Thanks to Hyde for organising this, and to Forrest for asking such a good question. Mine for the next blogger, “Which dish from your childhood would you defend against any critic?”, now feels a bit silly next to it, but that’s fine. That’s the beauty of asking a question to a stranger and getting a random one back.