On Format

I was talking about how I occasionally got frustrated with the format of the sites I've attempted to use in the past. Of all the sites I've used, LJ's medium-length posting environment is best suited for what I've been using it for, which was lightly formatted journal type posts with no particular requirements. It holds up well for really light academic type posting - basically just dropping some thoughts and a few links, but it's obviously not suited for anything that gets long and in-depth. It's not intended to do anything but the above, really. The mechanics matter. An extreme example is - you wouldn't want to use Twitter to write an essay. Since I've seen longer form Twitter series posted one after another, that's not so extreme as to be ridiculous, but the mechanics of the platform don't facilitate that kind of thing.

So, you know. Media platforms (all media is ultimately social, really) get used for stuff that wasn't intended all the time. I can respect that, but I've got specific desires for what I'm posting stuff to.

LJ is an old format. It's hard to boost to people who don't already follow you. It's intended to be more private than not, actually. I used Xanga for a pretty good while and moved back to run this blog during a night shift job that was eating me alive as a venue for Cam related stuff. I don't do Cam shit anymore (and I don't really like the LARP format in general, to be honest) but I do occasionally vent stuff for the consideration of others. It's a small community here and I don't really cross-post stuff here elsewhere. I tried a blog elsewhere and I'm not suited to it. I could produce blog content but blog writing is a different kind of thing - really to the point, often link intensive, frequently updated. So, I could, but I don't and I'm writing a lot of much longer form stuff right now. Running a blog often seems tempting to me, but I haven't been able to do it yet and I probably won't ever do it successfully.

I have a Google Sites page. It's technically open to the public to view, but there's very little reason for people to go there. I wanted an all in one kind of location where I was able to quickly pull up text or pdf documents I had uploaded and where I had posted my notes so they weren't constantly getting lost. I wanted a place that was a little bit of an extension of my computers file system and my desktop. Kind of a digital workbench, really. I felt Google shit was the obvious first attempt because Google's already trying to do that, so I felt a site that was kind of a neater, more organized extension of Google Drive/Docs, Sites, Calendar, whatever would be really useful and it actually wasn't. The sites themselves don't allow the customization I want (or maybe they do and I haven't figured them out yet) and I want something that's kind of a split between a normal hierarchical model and the rhizomatic wiki model.

Problem is, that takes time and since the site isn't pressing and other deadline are, it's really back-burner stuff.

I remember everyone and their dog (often literally) had a personal webpage, usually complete with an ad hoc site ring links page. They were usually really crude and tacky, but it got fairly common to ask if someone had a personal page when you met them for the first time when I was in high school. I think that's largely shifted over to a disparate series of free social media blogs which are pre-formatted and awash in ads, but really, really easy to use. I understand the purpose of having a tumblr, for ex, because tumblr does something really specific well and does everything else really badly,but because people naturally don't want to split their time between too many online environments (which tend to be Facebook and one or two other environments), websites are really only for pros at this point and really picky individuals. I'm increasingly thinking of doing my own site again, though.