hyeonje's writing

why i'm making my own website

The primacy of algorithm injustice has become increasingly evident to me over the past three years. The advent of new, twisted technologies of war, unleashed on the Palestinians in Gaza, has been but the most visible zenith of what is an entire iceberg of psychological and spiritual torture inflicted upon us by Big Tech and a government that allies with it.

I see a way for me to exist in relation to technology and I want to get there, I'm not there yet, but I will get there through deeper intention, practice, resistance, creativity, persistence, and experimentation.

The people who lead and built these companies that have exclusive control over what media we consume are literally raping, killing, and eating babies.

It's been four years since I had a "professional" Instagram account that I use for my self-promotion as a DJ. That came right after a year or two of not having any social media. I've had a nice run. I need to get the fuck off it again, please.

By making my own website, I'm rescinding as much of my own personal agency and creativity that I have given over to Big Tech as I can.

I can remember first, willingly, giving my power over a long time ago. I suppose it was 2009 or so. I think that's when I made my first reddit account. I was a sophomore in high school, and I was taking an animation class. At the time we didn't consider it giving up power, but early-adoption. It was exciting to use new websites like Reddit, and Facebook, and Tumblr, etcetera.

Fast forward almost two decades, and now we are in a place where the literal entire US economy has been hollowed out and replaced by the ballooned monstrosities that seven of these tech companies evolved into. This new pseudo economy, merely something strange, not even really a physical economy any more, so much as an opaque mirage of data flows: shuffling packets and tokens and other abstractions back and forth between computers. This hurricane of electrons, which operates as a sub-perceptual whirr chugging along in the background of daily life, invisibly erodes away our sanity.

It does feel complicated for me to delete social media. I wonder if this complicated feeling is fear? Fear of becoming irrelevant as an artist, and a DJ. The critical thought emerges: If I don't have Instagram, then I won't get booked. But see, in the moment I wonder if that feeling is really even true, I immediately feel a deeper truth: how my desire to excise all participation in that destructive machine completely eclipses any feeble loyalties to my "relevance".

I would rather dissolve away into irrelevance if that's really what it takes to stand materially behind my principles. Besides, it's not even so much as a 'principle' as it is a feeling. It's a sense of disgust. I am disgusted by engaging with social media in any sort of way. It's not even hard. It actually will make me feel at ease to do so.

I don't want to disappear either. I don't not want to exist online. I'm only rejecting being terminally online because I don't want to be terminally anything. I want to be joyfully online. I want to be curiously online. I want to be cautiously online. And oh yeah, I don't want to exist on a platform that funds the killing of babies.

Why do I feel like I am in a popularity contest as a fully grown 32 year old? I feel like I'm comparing myself to everyone on Instagram constantly and it always has felt that way. At one point it was about looks and glamour, and maybe it still is. But if not that, I compare my level of success to other people with internet businesses, freelancers, artists, musicians, etc. That's fucking sad. I'm literally so disgusted by the ecosystem of psychic energy that allows this vibe to even exist in my head.

I never want to see a fucking advertisement ever again. Those fucking vertical ads. "User generated content". Fucking ads masquerading as harmless selfie videos by relatable normal people but that are actually engineered to eke out one extra decimal point of retention from you. FUCK. It's so deceptive. I feel insulted, and I hate myself for falling for it. When I scroll, I willingly handcuff myself into the reclining chair of a sheisty dentist with a forged degree from a de-accredited med school and an insatiable drive to shake me down for the shirt off my back.

If I feel this negatively about Instagram, I have to delete it.

To not do so would mean that I don't actually respect myself enough to follow through on my values, desires, and wants.

I envision a replacing of this negative yet fully justified and righteous HATER energy with the beautiful, generative feelings that are arising from even just the process of setting up this website and writing my first blog post. YES. It feels soooo good to DIY.

I imagine all of the room in my head that I will reclaim by unplugging. An opening up of time and space for something unexpected. New, curious inputs from the world of things and physical objects as opposed to the AI-generated mind control slop designed to incapacitate me and further dissociate my brain from my fleshy senses.

I'm scared, but I know that I need to do this. The first step towards algorithmic freedom begins today.