Find out how to Weave the Artisan Internet

ZeroToHero | Posted on February 7, 2023 |

I wrote on Twitter yesterday:

Everybody ought to begin running a blog once more. Personal your personal website. Go to all your folks’ websites. Carry again the artisan, hand-crafted Internet. Certain, it is a little bit extra work, nevertheless it’s price it. You do not even have to cease utilizing social media! It is a “sure, and” scenario, not a “no, however” one. https://t.co/BzHYh59F36 — John Scalzi (@scalzi) November 24, 2022

“However Scalzi,” I hear you say, “How will we deliver again that artisan, hand-crafted Internet?” Effectively, it’s easy, actually, and in case you’re a author/artist/musician/different type of creator, it’s really form of important:

1. Create/reactivate your personal website, owned by you, to carry your personal work.

2. If you create that website, write or in any other case current work in your website a minimum of as soon as per week, each week.

3. Often go to the websites of different creators to learn/see/expertise the work they current there.

4. Promote/hyperlink the work of others, by yourself website and in addition in your different social media channels the place you have got followers. Encourage your followers to discover extra broadly, past the algorithmic borders of “social media.”

Now, why ought to we deliver again that artisan, hand-crafted Internet? Oh, I don’t know. Wouldn’t it’s good to have a website that’s not run by an amoral billionaire chaos engine, or algorithmically designed to maintain you doomscrolling in a state of worry and anger, or is basically spy ware for governments and/or firms? Wouldn’t it’s good to not have adverts shoved in your face each time you open an app to see what your folks are as much as? Wouldn’t it’s good to know that when your folks submit one thing, you’ll really see it and not using a social media platform deciding whether or not to shove it down your feed and pump that feed stuffed with stuff you didn’t ask for?

Wouldn’t that be nice?

“However Scalzi,” I hear you say, for a second time, “I spent all this time on social media and all my persons are there! You’re asking me to begin from scratch!” Effectively, see: You don’t have to go away Twitter or Fb or TikTok or wherever. Keep so long as you want, and submit no matter you want there. Simply carve out a few of that doomscrolling/toiletscrolling time to your personal house, that you simply management, too. And if you do, then hyperlink to your personal website from that different social media, and invite your followers on these companies to go to you in your personal place. And hyperlink to different individuals’s private websites, so your followers can go to them, too. Make social media give you the results you want, and never only for the amoral billionaires.

That stated, sure, it’s going to take some work. Establishing a website, or reactivating it, takes a little bit of time. Writing or presenting work unique to your personal website takes some work. Getting your followers on social media used to the thought of leaving these walled gardens of content material takes some work. It’s an precise undertaking. However take a look at this manner: You could have simply spent years constructing an viewers on a platform another person owns. Why not take some time to do it for your self? And to assist others construct their very own platforms, too. No rush! Let it construct over time. However put within the time.

Your platform, one submit per week. It’s not too laborious, and the upside is much less reliance on different individuals’s platforms, and a more healthy, extra different Internet. Keep on social media! Make it give you the results you want, not you’re employed for it.

Construct a greater Internet. An artisan Internet. A handcrafted Internet. Take the time to get individuals used to it. We’ll all profit from it. We simply should determine to do it.

— JS