10/23/2024
I like the hobby of making personal, amateur websites, and browsing through other people's sites... but unfortunately I've noticed a small amount of people who seem to engage with this hobby in a kind of negative way.
There's a kind of person who primarily wants to look down on others and are extremely critical... so they mostly just focus on "negatives" and things they hate instead of what they like. This isn't exclusive to the web, but it feels easy to find this kind of attitude online.
It makes me think "So you go on and on and on about what you hate about the modern day web... So what?! Why should I really care if you don't give an in-practice example of something to love?!"
They swear off social media to the point that they actively deny any good aspects of it, and disparage those who just want to use it to connect with others who they care about or share interests with. Or, God forbid, to further their careers in the arts or entertainment.
If it worked for you to leave social media behind, great. That won't work for me, and I'm not worse or more stupid for it - I just want social media to be better suited for my wants and needs than it currently is. To me, websites serve a different function.
I think this kind of attitude stems from a superiority complex of some sort. Saying this as someone with an ego the size of the sun, it's still not a good thing to take out on other people. Arrogance by itself maybe isn't that bad, but how you treat others and the lense through which you view the world and the people in it matters. It's something that you have to keep reigned in, and even I struggle with that.
There's also a little bit of hypocrisy when it comes to critisizing the cliques that form on social media... but then treating neocities and such like a club of people who are better than the mindless masses, and sometimes even looking down on newcomers because they're young and don't know how to code yet.
As a hater, my wisdom is that it is also important to care about things. Keep the balance and shit. I always try to frame my hobbies and online presence as a whole in terms of things I like before things I dislike. I don't want "hating social media" to become the primary motivator for people to engage with this hobby, instead I think it should be "liking custom websites" first and foremost.