Exactly one year ago, I said farewell to the rather depressing world of “content creation” on Big Web platforms. I currently have fewer than twenty regular followers (that I know of) on this website – and it’s great! I can’t even begin to express how freeing it is to write for such a small, genuinely nice and supportive audience, and how satisfying it is to know that I’m no longer contributing free labour to the likes of Google and Meta.
Even though I was never monetized on any platform1 and only created “content” for the fun of it, I still felt immense pressure to monitor my analytics dashboards. If I didn’t achieve a certain number of views and comments within the first 48 hours of posting something, the time and effort that went into the content felt like a complete waste. And that was at the hobby level! Who knows how miserable I would have been if I’d ever tried to turn content creation into a second source of income?
On the small web, all of that self-imposed pressure to perform falls away. I no longer worry about posting schedules, SEO, trending topics, phrasing everything just so to stand out from “the competition” … I only write when I feel like it, about whatever I feel like writing about. Hobbies that I previously felt compelled to document on video for the enjoyment of other people are now just hobbies I enjoy in private. No more cursing over bad takes, no more recording and re-recording videos until everything is perfect. Indeed, the freedom to be imperfect is one of the things I love most about this space.
There are definitely some things I would have done differently over this past year if I had my time back,2 but I’m very happy with how this particular website has turned out overall. I’ve had great fun getting back into coding, web design, and writing for pleasure. I’ve also really enjoyed interacting with the small web community via Mastodon and the 32 Bit Café.
The satisfying rush of posting something and watching the comments stream in may be gone, but I’m much happier on the whole with devoting precious free time to a personal project that belongs to me – not some parasitic third party.
Here’s to many more years of freedom on the small web!