writing

I always find it interesting when you read something that makes total sense, which helps you understand why people feel a certain way… and expresses something which you’ve never felt personally at all.

Take this piece, “This is what you’re nostalgic for“, by Jay Hoffmann. It’s about the discomfort I see from many elderly statespeople of the web: that some of the fun has gone out of it all. The whole thing is well worth reading, but I want to highlight the following key section:

“And for my small group of relative outsiders, the web fit right in with what all of the other stuff we were doing. So when I experience wistful anemoia¹ thinking about the earliest years of the web, I’m reconnecting with the part of myself that built a silly little website for a handful of scene kids I hung out with that might think it was cool. I think it’s that same feeling that grips others as well.”

And I begin to realise one reason why I’ve been so unsympathetic in the past with people complaining that the web has lost some of its magic. It’s because I never had that particular experience when I was younger. It’s describing an alien experience.

Sure, I have some very fond memories of my early years online, over two decades ago now. There’s the early years of Knightmare.com, where I found out for the first time that other people remembered that show as well as me. Or similar early days discovering other people were interested in TV presentation. And then there was talking to the same person across two different forums, meeting up, and ending up going out with each other. We’re still together. So don’t get me wrong: the web bringing odd people together is one I fully understand.

And then, sure, I went on to make things. I wrote for Red Dwarf fansite Ganymede & Titan for years, and set up general telly/film/comics/whatever site Noise to Signal. But it always felt, in the main, like I improved over the years, rather than there being some magical time in the past where I did the best work I’d ever do. I may have done less of it, but my writing in 2019 for G&T was surely better than in 2003. And my writing here on Dirty Feed in 2022 is most certainly better than I was doing on Noise to Signal in 2006, and that’s not even a close-run thing. It’s miles better.

The question is why I feel differently to many, of course, and that’s a difficult one to answer. The fact that I actually continued writing online when a lot of people found other things to do is one. Maybe the fact I never went into web development for a living is another.² I actually think the fact I never had kids is a huge factor; it means that I’ve had time to continue doing fun things online, rather than wistfully look back on the years when I did that kind of thing, and was forced to stop.

Or maybe it’s simply because I don’t have a lot of fond memories of myself when I was younger, and prefer the kind of person I am now. To look back on those early days for me is to look at wasted opportunity, not some kind of golden age.

But while I find it difficult to identify with Hoffman’s piece personally, that’s not to say I think it doesn’t have useful advice. Because I really think it does.

“I’m not sure we’ll be able to shake off this anemoia. We yearn to be outsiders again. And we won’t. And that’s ok. But, we might be able to direct this feeling to something worthwhile now that it has a name.”

“Outsiders” is a loaded word, and to be fair, the article is rightly wary of anybody aiming to become one.³ But I think Hoffman is right in that by identifying this feeling, people can use it to create something worthwhile.

Because while aiming to become an outsider is a bit icky, aiming to create something unusual, or for a very particular audience, is perfectly safe ground. It’s what I do on here all the time. Going into Red Dwarf‘s sets in this much detail is a very silly thing to do. Just as silly as Hoffman’s site from years ago, aimed at a bunch of scene kids.

But there are people out there who want to read it. You might have to work a bit to find them; it’s easy to get lost in the noise these days. But they’re still there. And that’s what we can all aim for. If you don’t think the web is fun enough any more, it won’t magically get better by sitting back with your arms folded and complaining.

Write or create something you want to see in the world. Everything else comes after that: how to get the right people to notice it, or indeed how to get the right people to ignore it. But without that initial act of creation, nothing else will happen. The web will only be fun if we make it so.

But we can. People do. Every single day. And you don’t need to be young and intense in order to do it.

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1. anemoia – n. nostalgia for a time you’ve never known. ↩

2. Apart from a brief, year-long adventure running my own web design company, which ended in complete failure. ↩

3. “Bit of a maverick, not afraid to break the law if he thinks it’s necessary. He’s not a criminal, you know, but he will, perhaps, travel 80mph on the motorway if, for example, he wants to get somewhere quickly.” ↩

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Hey, here’s a list of some of the great things which have happened on Medium over the past decade! Let’s take a look at some of them, shall we?

Matter, Medium’s original flagship publication, joins the platform.

Matter last published on Medium in December 2016, and never said goodbye.

The Message — a self-described “anarcho-collective writing group” featuring authors such as Sloane Crosley, Tressie McMillan Cottom, and Virginia Heffernan — launches on Medium.

The Message last published on Medium in May 2016, and never said goodbye.

Former Minnesota Viking Chris Kluwe weighs in on Gamergate for sports publication The Cauldron.

The Cauldron last published on Medium in February 2017… although they did finally say goodbye two years later.

We spin up the Medium Coronavirus Blog to share expert analysis, and The Verge dubs Medium “the best and worst” place for Covid-19 news.

The Medium Coronavirus Blog last published on Medium in June 2021, and never said goodbye despite the fact that this is an ongoing news story.

For OneZero, Matt Stroud exposes the CEO of Banjo’s neo-Nazi past, leading to his resignation.

OneZero last published on Medium in April 2022, and never said goodbye.

For Marker, Will Oremus explains why all the toilet paper went missing (and goes on MSNBC to talk about it).

Marker last published on Medium in April 2022, and never said goodbye.

When memoirist Elizabeth Wurtzel passes away in January, GEN publishes her final year, in her own words.

GEN last published on Medium in – guess what – April 2022, and never said goodbye.

*   *   *

I’m sure with some of the above, you might be able to find a goodbye post from someone who worked on them. But that isn’t the point. The goodbye should obviously be on the publication itself where everyone will read it, not hidden away in a post elsewhere.

So, why is the above important? Let’s take a look at Medium’s about – sorry, “Our Story” page:

“The best ideas can change who we are. Medium is where those ideas take shape, take off, and spark powerful conversations. We’re an open platform where over 100 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Our purpose is to spread these ideas and deepen understanding of the world.

We’re creating a new model for digital publishing. One that supports nuance, complexity, and vital storytelling without giving in to the incentives of advertising. It’s an environment that’s open to everyone but promotes substance and authenticity. And it’s where deeper connections forged between readers and writers can lead to discovery and growth. Together with millions of collaborators, we’re building a trusted and vibrant ecosystem fueled by important ideas and the people who think about them.”

Authenticity? Connections? Trusted? All lovely words.

But how can you be authentic as a publication, if you just disappear without warning? Was what you were saying worthwhile, or not? How can you build connections between readers and writers, if you suddenly don’t hold up your end of the bargain, without explaining why? And how can you be trusted, if… well, I think you get the point.

Time and time again, the above happens on Medium. And let’s be clear – a load of publications suddenly disappearing at exactly the same time is nothing short of hilarious. But it is also an absolutely fantastic way to make it look like you have utter contempt for your readers. Sure, just abandon them without even telling them what’s going on. Again. And I would point out that Medium isn’t just a place where normal writers show up, write, and then get bored and drift off; many of the above publications were edited by people who work or worked for Medium.

If you never bothered to say goodbye to your loyal readers, did you ever really care about what you were doing at all? If you don’t want to communicate with your intended audience, can you really call yourself a writer? And if that’s unfair to individuals – and actually, the weight of evidence seems to suggest that it probably is – what the hell is the institutional problem at Medium that allows the above to happen over and over again?

And for what it’s worth: yes, I do practice what I preach.

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Working in the pop culture mines can be hard.

Take this article on the 1990 Lucasfilm Games release Loom, written by one of my favourite writers, Jimmy Maher. As part of the background to the piece, however, he has to write about a different game:

“Lucasfilm Games’s one adventure of 1989 was a similarly middling effort. A joint design by Gilbert, Falstein, and Fox, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure — an Action Game was also made — marked the first time since Labyrinth that the games division had been entrusted with one of George Lucas’s cinematic properties. They don’t seem to have been all that excited at the prospect. The game dutifully walks you through the plot you’ve already watched unfold on the silver screen, without ever taking flight as a creative work in its own right.”

Maher is quickly picked up on this characterisation of the Indiana Jones game in the comments by Jason Dyer:

“I’m going to have to disagree with you here:

The game dutifully walks you through the plot you’ve already watched unfold on the silver screen, without ever taking flight as a creative work in its own right.

There is a *lot* of branching. There is so much branching I actually have a hard time thinking of a “classic-style” adventure game with more branching. (Fate of Atlantis, which is admittedly a better game, does a big branch into 3 routes at the beginning, but doesn’t really have any plot-driven branches in the middle.)

For example, you can play the scene entering the castle exactly like the movie (Indy punching the butler out) but it is quite possible to talk your way in. If you do so, it makes other things either.

If you recall the scene where they get the grail book from Berlin: it’s possible to not even lose the book and be able to skip the Berlin scene entirely.

There are quite a few endings as well; things don’t have to go anything like the movie.”

Maher takes the point gracefully:

“Hmm… maybe I just tried to do what Indy did in the movie, found it generally worked, and didn’t explore further. This in itself is of course another problematic aspect of adapting a linear story to an adventure game, but it seems I may have underestimated the game’s flexibility.”

The conversation then goes on to discuss plenty of the different scenarios and solutions the game offers, which is well worth reading in its own right, but I won’t quote any more from it here. My point here is not to dwell on the fact that Maher misjudged the game. Rather my point is to show how easy it was for him to accidentally do so.

Because Maher’s article wasn’t about Indiana Jones. He was specifically talking about Loom. But in order to do so, he had to give a bit of background. So he gave something a reasonable poke, thought he had the measure of it, and ended up misjudging it.

Now, if that happens with the main subject of your article, that’s on you. If the mistake had been about Loom itself, it would have been far less forgivable. But here, Maher runs into the problem we all do when writing about pop culture online. Which is, of course, the same problem that everybody has when researching anything.

Because there is a sheer combinational problem with research. It is unreasonable to expect that in order for someone to write about Loom, they also have to have deeply researched Indiana Jones, and learn about all the different routes through the game. Maher did the most anybody could expect here: he played the game, and formed an opinion based on that. You can’t expect anybody to do more, when you are trying to publish to some kind of regular, sensible schedule.

Sometimes, with tangents, you need to take a slight leap of faith. And sometimes, that leap will be misjudged. If you misjudge the central topic of your article, that’s on you. If you misjudge a tangent, you might feel a bit silly… but it’s an error which is virtually impossible to avoid completely.

Of course, there are ways to try and avoid the worst of these. Getting people you trust to proofread your work is of course one. But there is a limit to how much you can expect others to do when they’re not part of a strict, paid editorial structure. When you’re striking out on your own, such things are inevitable.

So have pity on your local pop culture writer, when we inevitably fall into these mistakes. We try our best, or at least those of us worth reading do. And please, correct us if you see something wrong. We can’t know everything.

And any decent writer will accept a correction with good grace.

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Over the last few months, I’ve spent far too long slagging other people off for pretending to write. I worry that some people have misunderstood my point on this, and that I think everybody should be writing shit for free on the internet. Needless to say, this is very much not the case. Most people have better things to do.

My argument has always been a little more subtle: it’s about people who seem to want to write, but put needless barriers in their way. It could be because they’re worried that their chosen topic isn’t “important” enough. It could be a bad site design which looks cool, but makes actually publishing your thoughts difficult. It could be the idea that you can “reclaim the open spirit of the web” simply by publishing a manifesto, rather than actually writing something interesting. If people who want to write could break past their own self-imposed obstacles to writing, then the net as a whole would be a lot better off.

But it’s amazing the excuses people will find not to do so. For instance, I saw this on Twitter just recently:

“I do sometimes miss my blogging days. But for it to come back, I’d really need some kind of directory like Technorati used to be. I want to follow who I know but also have some kind of awareness of the landscape as well.”

Now, would I like to see a brand new, modern blog directory? Of course I would. It would be a bloody great thing to have. I’m not the person to make it, but I wish someone would.

But here’s the thing: if the only reason you’re not writing is because you can’t find a decent blogging directory, you don’t really want to write. That’s fine: nobody is obliged to. But it’s not the lack of good directory that’s the problem. You can fill in the blanks it would provide in other ways: RSS feeds, social media, and the like. I let people know about my posts through Twitter, and learn about other people’s blogs and personal sites there too.

Is that perfect? Of course not. But what is?

If we want a lively, open, independent web, the one thing we can’t do is to sit and wait for somebody to provide it. And if you want to write, you have to write first. The act of writing and publishing is the important part. And that writing will inspire other things to slot into place. To fold our arms and say we won’t write until the blogosphere is thriving is simply an admission of defeat.

Nobody will provide your preferred way of linking blogs together, without having the blogs to link together in the first place. And the first step to improving the independent web isn’t to put together anything complicated. It’s to write something interesting, and hit publish.

We’ll sort out the rest later.

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The new, relaunched blog of a “web developer and designer”, somewhere near the start of 2020:

“The open web is a husk of its former self, conceded to the corporate ventures whose aim is to collect as much data as possible and leverage it in the most profitable manner possible. I want to reclaim my portion of it that dream of an open web of sharing ideas, culture, and imagination.”

Spoiler: they didn’t.

“I’m not happy with the result, but I will never be. Designing for oneself is an artistic act, and dissatisfaction for me in that sense is foundational. But again, that’s not the goal. The goal is to take back my part of the web.”

Spoiler: they didn’t.

“And with that, I will pledge to improve this site steadily and to contribute to the content regularly. To not let it die.”

Spoiler: they did.

*   *   *

I think caring about the open web is a good thing. I think sharing ideas, culture, and imagination is to be commended.

But you don’t do that by redesigning your blog, posting a manifesto, and then leaving it to rot. The design and manifesto are the least important thing. If you want to take back your part of the web, then you need to share your ideas and thoughts for real, on an ongoing basis.

It doesn’t have to be every day. Or even every week. And it certainly doesn’t have to be in blog posts stretching to thousands of words. There are so many different ways of doing it. It doesn’t matter.

But however we do it: if we truly want to take back control from those “corporate ventures”, then we need to actually say something. Not get trapped in that old redesign-languish-redesign cycle.

You want people to step outside Facebook? Have something which makes it worthwhile for people to step outside Facebook. Walled gardens are only worth leaving if there’s something nice on the other side of the wall. And your latest site redesign just isn’t going to be enough.

Contributing to the open web doesn’t need much. It doesn’t need 1337 design skillz. It doesn’t need hours of your time a day. And it most certainly doesn’t need any kind of manifesto.

It just needs you to start writing, and see what happens.

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Sometimes, seeing how somebody else approaches writing clarifies how you approach your own. Or, rather, how not to approach it.

Take the following piece of advice, given to one blog writer who very much took it to heart.¹

“Knowing when to stop is not exactly the same as knowing what to start. Determining what’s worthy is harder than simply finding something interesting.”

Different advice helps different people, and that’s fine. But speaking personally: I can’t think of anything more dreadful than having to decide what is worthy for me to write about. If something is interesting, that’s more than enough. Why put barriers in your way before you even start?

The person who was given this advice even struggles with it to some extent:

“Years later, as I emerge from what does indeed feel like an extended dormancy, I’m still seeking clarity on what’s worthy. But what I do know: time to start, it is. These handful of words mark an official commitment to an unofficial restart of writing.”

And I feel bad for them. Because to me, thinking about what’s “worthy” when writing on your own personal site is a recipe for treading water, and publishing nothing. And guess what: that’s exactly what happened.

We love to put barriers in the way of writing. Sometimes we want our backend to be perfect first. Sometimes we worry too much about being helpful. And sometimes we question whether what we’re doing is important at all.

It’s all nonsense. If you think something is interesting, it’s worth writing about, judgements about whether it’s “worthy” or not be damned. It might go nowhere. It might go somewhere. Just occasionally, it might really go somewhere. But the absolute worst thing that could happen?

You’ll have put something interesting into the world.

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1. I’m not linking to the source for this, deliberately. But you can easily find it yourself, if you know how to use Google and quote marks. ↩

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Let me quote excerpts of somebody’s blog to you. I’m not going to link to it, for reasons which will very quickly become obvious.

Its very first post is on the 20th May 2012, “Redesign notes and switching to Octopress”:

“When I set out to redesign this site and start blogging, I knew I wanted it to be a static HTML generated weblog (also commonly known as “baked”). Coming from WordPress, this publishing workflow is a dream.

Content, which is just static HTML, is created in Markdown in a text editor, saved into version control (Git) and pushed to GitHub to deploy. This means no database (MySQL) — a potential security nightmare and single point of failure, no page caching (goodbye WP Super Cache and W3 Total Cache), no FTP and super fast page loads – all good things.

I evaluated some great systems including Octopress, Middleman, Nesta CMS and I’m keeping a close eye on Calypso (built on Node.js and MongoDB), but in the end I opted for Octopress as it fitted my needs. I’m still ironing out a few kinks with Octopress, but overall I’m very pleased with how its worked out.”

Their next post is on the following day, the 21st May 2012. It’s called “My 2012 front-end web development workflow”:

“So far 2012 has been a big year for me in progressing my front-end web development skills, tools and process. I’ve also been busy learning new languages and frameworks and getting up to speed on the latest advancements.”

Excellent work.

Their next post is over three years later, on the 25th October 2015. This one is called “Site Design Refresh and Blog Reboot”:

“A lot’s happened since my last blog post three years ago in May 2012, which partly explains the lack of updates.¹

[…]

Process has been another factor towards my lack of writing. I love using static site generators like Jekyll and Middleman for prototyping, but as blogging platforms they don’t work for me. There’s too many steps between writing and publishing – opening a terminal, running rake commands to generate a post, editing markdown files, committing to git, and running rake build/deploy tasks. This gets in the way when all you want to do is write, and creates friction when trying to create posts on mobile devices whilst travelling (although there’s tools like Prose.io).

I’ve been tempted to reduce my site to a single page calling card and move my writing to Medium, but that goes against the Indie Web principle of POSSE (Publish on your Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere). With a personal website you retain control and ownership of your content. But there’s no denying that Medium has raised the bar in terms of the writing experience on the web. I’m currently in the process of rebuilding the back-end of this site in Ruby on Rails, and I’m planning to use Made by Many’s excellent Sir Trevor content editor (see the demo) for a great writing experience. This will inspire me to write more.”

The post then concludes:

“I’m excited about my own little space on the internet for the first time in years and have lots of blog post ideas that I can’t wait to share.

Next time I won’t leave it three years…”

This is the last post on their blog, at the time of writing. Over six years ago.

And in that one post, there is a triple-whammy of all my favourite things. An excuse for not writing. An announcement of a new blog design.² And a promise of loads of posts to come, which never happen. Most people only manage two of those things in any given blog entry, so that’s quite an impressive achievement.

[Read more →]

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1. The writer here then goes into exactly what they have done for the last three years, which is, in fact, genuinely more exciting than anything I have done in my entire life. ↩

2. Backend, but it counts. ↩

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