So I guess I am writing now? Yeah sure why not; I have nothing better to do. So, what has driven me to return to an art I haven't practiced since college? Anger, contempt, annoyance and a twisted self-righteous justice; the classic ingredients of an old man shaking his fist at nothing of import. Actually, that is reductive; I would argue it is quite important and that is the twisted use of the following mechanic on Neocities!
Let me just get right into it; if you have an account on Neocities, you already know what I’m talking about. You get a notification someone has followed your site and, excited to see that someone resonates with your work, you pop on over to their profile only to see that they followed 200 other sites and some 80% of those 200 followed back! Now let me tell you right now and very bluntly; I don’t give a shit about followers (the number, not the people). I make what I make; it’s a personal website; if someone genuinely resonates with it; awesome, but I'm going to do my own thing regardless. What I DO care about is respect, authenticity and artistic integrity; so when I see this happening; I feel terrible. Someone has just USED me to make some arbitrary number go up by exploiting a social system; they probably didn’t even look at my site outside of the thumbnail! And even if they did, it becomes meaningless at the sheer scale of it all. It’s sickening, it’s disrespectful; it is uncaring! Personal websites are supposed to be the antithesis of social media and yet people still insist on adopting socialmedia-like behavior!
Let me also be perfectly clear; This is not me pointing a single finger but two! The person who follows 200 people is EQUALLY a part of the problem as the person who blindly follows back like it’s some kind of obligation. And while I’m at it; DON’T THANK PEOPLE FOR FOLLOWING YOU; if someone (genuinely) follows you, than that was THEIR prerogative! You don’t owe anyone anything for following you; not even a thanks; you put the work in, you made the thing worth following! Now if they take the time to actually say something nice; then it’s a different story.