I read this really cool paper by barndoors today that I think you guys would really like it. I feel that it puts some clear, organized words to some thoughts and feelings many of us have had. With a lot of web manifestos I read, I end up finding one or two things where I either don't get what the author is going for, or I end up just seeing things differently from them, but everything here really nailed it for me.

There are several conceptualizations I really liked, one of which is seeing the 'web' as geography - websites as places - and how as corporations took over the spotlight on the web, they've collapsed this sense of 'place' into 'timelines' instead. Instead of netizens 'traveling' across the web, from one place to the next, we end up stuck on the same few websites, refreshing and waiting for the next piece of content.

I won't spoil the rest by writing it out here, there's a lot of goodness condensed into this. It's only a few pages long and all of it is really worth the read, would like to hear what you think.

To say I love this piece of writing is an understatement and it sums up thoughts and feelings I've had for a long time, so succinctly and gracefully.

The archivist collects and creates the weird, the broken, the esoteric,
and the ugly.

I'm an archivist.

I am drawn, increasingly, to human curation of any and all kinds: even arda's green apple gallery, or a photograph of some random cups left on a sideboard in a suburban kitchen (posted by MelonKing), and these moved me because...

The archivist champions the "useless." The corporate state seeks to monetize every second
of attention and every pixel of screen space.

And because...

The solution is not reform, but rewilding.

And because...

Useless to a corporation is not the same as useless to a human. MelonKing's photo of some cups on his kitchen sideboard would be at home in a modern art gallery. But, they don't need to be sanctified by the church of art to be art.

The only other thing I would add is that it has become natural through our indoctrination into the 'content consuming asset' structure and culture to be very permission begging and audience size focused.

We must stop asking big corporations for permission to be human and creative by handing over data and doing MFA, or expecting large audiences for the things we make.

In a landscape defined by the terrifying velocity of the feed, where culture is consumed
and discarded in 24hour cycles, the only remaining radical act is the refusal to move. The
artist must reject the role of content creator, a term designed to reduce creative work to
a filler material for ad slots.

SummerO wrote: Tue Jun 09, 2026 2:01 am Useless to a corporation is not the same as useless to a human. MelonKing's photo of some cups on his kitchen sideboard would be at home in a modern art gallery. But, they don't need to be sanctified by the church of art to be art.

Yes!!

SummerO wrote: Tue Jun 09, 2026 2:01 am We must stop asking big corporations for permission to be human and creative by handing over data and doing MFA, or expecting large audiences for the things we make.

Agreed!

The article really helped to clarify some of my mission and inquiry into technology, even helping clarify the direction of building my own private home server. I really would like to shed my dependency on cloud services, like Google Docs and Drive, and host those services on my own hard drives and machines. While it may take more effort, I think that effort keeps us in touch with the technology we use and perhaps spark more gratitude for what we have and are able to do with it.

I'm actually on a data-hoarding Discord, and I'm a huge fan of video game preservation.