This page is dedicated to, well…
Me.
But not the me I was, rather the me I hope to become. Like a lot of people in [insert current year] I found myself inundated with notifications and enamored with the saccharin sweetness of fleeting online validation. I saw myself become an extension of an algorithm in real-time, unwittingly modifying small values in my settings, patching old code, unable to do anything to stop it.
I saw myself change. Imperceptibly at first but by leaps and bounds over time, and not for the better. The way I talked, the way I held myself, the way I couldn’t look at a situation in my own mind without viewing it through the lens of an audience. It was and is completely terrifying.
This is the rejection of the things that made me feel good, the things that fed my soul but had no actual nourishment. Not unlike the waxy prop fruit at a furniture store; sure they’ll fill your stomach and stave off hunger for that single brief moment, but once your body realizes it’s been duped, the signals return amplified and insatiable.
That realization – along with some gentle persuasion from the love of my life – gave me all the data I needed to completely decimate my online presence as I knew it. TikTok, gone. Tumblr, gone. Twitter kinda sucked so that was easy – still. gone. Instagram, gone.
It became an exercise in willful sensory depravation, and what I found through the beginning of the process was that these things filled so much of my time without leaving me fulfilled after that time had passed.
How much potential had I deprived myself of? Honestly, it’s a question I might never want the actual answer to. An information hazard of sorts.
It took a lot of work, and even more pain. In the end all that pain is worth it and I’d endure it again and again to know that this would be where I landed.
This website is a personal experiment. A veritable shrine to myself, from myself. An experiment in web design, writing, art, photography, and self love.
I hope to find some answers through this process, but more importantly I want to find questions I’d never thought to ask myself.
Thanks for coming along for the ride.
-Ben
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