‘This site, upon which my eyes have rested, this tiny hideout on the infinitely vast World Wide Web serveth but as a one-way channel. A collection of personal trinkets that belong to the expanse of the internet, whereby tidings pass from the collector—keeper of this site—unto me—the reader. And no word of mine returneth to this place of inspiration, for this is no common social medium! No comment shall be suffered beneath thy postings, nor any tongue permitted to wag beneath thine sharings!’
‘Is’t truly so? Or are these words but the idle thoughts of a fool who deemeth himself powerless? I might ask, “What folly possesseth thee?”—yet I know full well the answer: ’twas the Algorithmic Gaze thou hast been given that hath made thee speak thus so. Think beyond this gaze, lift its veil, and ask thyself, in earnest, this question: Hast thou not the selfsame powers as I, keeper of this website? Canst thou not be as a spider within the web, tending its silken threads and cherishing thine own domain? Cast off, then, the notion that thou art powerless. The web is thine to tend, if only thou wouldst grasp the threads.’
In order to explain myself a bit better, I could share links to Substack articles (for instance, this one by Real Japanese Aesthetics that explain their plan, which funnily enough felt similar to mine: ‘In our own words, ‘internet punk’ means surviving inside this shitty capitalist realism without being swallowed by it, even as it keeps pushing us around. After thinking about it over the past few months, we have decided to run this place as our own internet punk experiment.’
This is an outburst, filled with mistakes and tomfoolery, fiddling around and finding out. That way, I hope that I might bring back some hope for an Alive Internet Theory, since I am done with the hopelessness of the attention economy profiting from doomscrolling zombies on hanging over couches all over a burning world. Call this what you want, an internet punk experiment, hopecore, a blog, whatever. I just want to share some honesty here every once in a while. Sometimes I write, sometimes I do some noodling with my modular synthesizer, sometimes I share websites or weird music I made. Maybe it will inspire you too. Since you are still reading, maybe you should indeed delete your social media and make an own website (it is super easy). If you do, mail me yours, and I’ll add it to my friends-page.
Oh, and if you can read Dutch, I have some writings that might interest you. But Luc, you are writing this in English; why not simply write your proze and poems in English also? Well, my mother tongue is Dutch, which makes it resonate deeper with me than any other languages (leaving aside the exceptions that stretch the definition of language). Maybe I will translate my work at some point, but I can’t guarantee a thing. I like to be wispelturig about art.