I always loved taking screenshots of the websites I made ever since I discovered the power of the Print Screen button. I used to change layouts every couple of months at most and would beam with pride while staring at each one.
I lost screenshots of my old sites when my computer was destroyed in a fire at our house in 2008, though. The only ones I have left are screenshots from archive.org of whatever sites they were able to crawl but with broken images.
Anyway, last month, I decided to finally start working on this site when I figured maybe it would help to be less anonymous for work and networking purposes.
This is what this site looked like before I decided to change things up.
The WordPress theme is Björk by Anders Noren. I made it pink because cute and also, too many sites are white now. I know nothing about UX and UI so maybe this is not the “correct” way to do things. It’s a cool and straightforward theme, and I’m sure I could have turned it into something like what I have here now, but I figured I’d just start over with a new theme.
Aside from the look, I also decided to do away with the stuffy-sounding writing. I think I was influenced and intimidated by what colleagues and acquaintances wrote about themselves on their LinkedIns and websites that it made me go, “Hmm, I too must highlight my expertise in such a manner.”
Anyway, good luck to the current layout and may it last at least six months.
I feel like some curmudgeon who’s always romanticizing the Internet of the 2000s, but come on, social media is a scourge, and the dead Internet theory feels increasingly real. People just used to do whatever on the Internet back then, and there are sites that are still being talked about today. And there were so many different websites you could stumble upon* and end up bookmarking and visiting regularly.
That’s why it’s always nice to see something that doesn’t quite follow whatever the rules are for having an online presence. Just take a look at GAKHED.
Now, did I conduct thorough research into this 20-year-old guy who’s making heartwarming animal videos set to music that I think he created himself? Naw. I’m just winging this.
Anyway, I’m on YouTube a lot, and his video “will you remember me?” came across my feed a while back and made me stop and watch and feel a little sad thinking about my aging dogs.
And then there’s his website. It’s hosted by Neocities and I’m pretty sure veterans of the Internet will chuckle when they see it.
I don’t know the guy, I haven’t followed him that long, but I really love what he’s doing. His videos are short! They don’t follow the let’s-make-movie-length-videos-bwahaha thing happening on YouTube these days (though I really wouldn’t mind watching hour-long videos of animals with chill music)!
And let me mention his website again. He’s 20, which means he wasn’t online during that time of the Internet and probably just likes vintage online aesthetics. So cool. So whimsical. I don’t know if all this is authentic or if he just knows he can garner some interest because of what he’s doing, and I don’t care, I love it, I need to see more of this type of energy from people online, and I think it’s a good reminder that you can really still do whatever on the Internet.
It’s a rainy Sunday afternoon, I’m still working on this website instead of my deadlines today (the remote freelancer life, amirite), and I was trying to figure out what intelligent, insightful thing I should be writing for this blog, so I decided to go to Dooce.com, a blog I haven’t visited in quite a while, and see what Heather Armstrong is up to these days.
I used to visit her blog a lot in the 2000s. I loved how raw and open her writing was. And she had a huge impact on blogging; everyone knew what getting Dooced meant, and she was a mommy blogger and making sponcon long before influencers were even a thing.
I saw that her last post was in April 2023. That didn’t seem strange at first, because a lot of bloggers from the 2000s are usually found on Instagram or Substack these days.
And then I Googled her and found out that she died in May 2023. It’s a gut punch to read about how it happened.
I don’t have an eloquent belated tribute for her. I was just a very sporadic onlooker in her life and someone who hoped to write about life in a way that’s half as authentic as she did. I hadn’t kept up with her the way I did decades ago, so I don’t know about any controversies she might have been involved with, so I will just remember her as the pioneer that she was.
I started blogging in 1999, back when blogs were still known as weblogs and online journals and Blogger was cutting edge. It was so cutting edge I was afraid of nicking myself and thus opted to just manually update and reupload HTML pages on my personal website, wherever it was hosted. My online heroes included Christine of Maganda.org, Claire of Loobylu, and Heather of Harrumph and Jezebel (which incidentally became one of my favorite websites in the 2010s, though it was completely different from the site Heather ran). I wanted to be as creative and as good with words as they were, and thought that whatever I wrote deserved to curl up and cry in a corner when compared to what they posted.
Eventually, I found a community of fellow online journalers, and many of us made our way to Livejournal, which used to require an invite from a friend before you could join. Once I received that elusive invite, I proceeded to vomit all over my journal and most likely caused eyes to weld to the back of heads with all my drama.
Once I started working, the urge to blog tapered off, and when I wasn’t looking, blogging exploded. People were cultivating loyal readerships and making money from blogging. Soon, food blogs, travel blogs, shopping blogs, beauty blogs, parenting blogs, green blogs, gadget blogs were everywhere. I wanted to have any one of those and often regretted giving up blogging.
Trying to figure out my unique niche (ew) and worrying about being cringe have forced me to stop blogging for years. As I got older, I realized that, truly, most of the time, you’re the only one who gets in your way, and you just end up doing absolutely nothing, and life’s really just too short to keep yourself stuck. So here I go again.
Earlier this week, I briefly attended the book launch for Raissa Robles‘s book Marcos Martial Law: Never Again held at Balay Kalinaw in UP Diliman. Noel Cabangon performed “Bayan Ko” before the main discussion with the panel, which featured Robles, Roberto “Obet” Verzola, Senator Rene Saguisag, Pete Lacaba, Bonifacio Ilagan, and Dean Ronald Mendoza of the Ateneo School of Government, began.
The attendees, to my dismay, were mostly older people, with a smattering of younger ones, which to me only highlights the idea that younger people are becoming less and less interested and aware of what happened during the Martial Law years and why it all remains relevant today. Alan Robles moderated the discussion, and one of his first questions was about why people seem to have forgotten all about the atrocities during Martial Law and how it’s possible that Bongbong Marcos has a very strong chance to become vice president. I think the panelists got it right when they said that no one was ever really held accountable for all the wrongdoings during Martial Law. Nobody was arrested, nobody was tried and jailed, and the Marcoses were allowed back in the country a mere handful of years after they were kicked out of power.
Aside from justice not being served, I believe another key factor is that Martial Law was never really discussed in depth in schools. I don’t remember any detailed information being taught about those years, only that Marcos was in power for a very long time. In fact, I only learned the truth about Martial Law when I was in college through a very excellent documentary entitled Batas Militar. I can’t say for sure whether history isn’t taught properly to children because people don’t think children will understand or that such details are too much (too disturbing) to handle. And then there’s the perpetual refrain that learning history isn’t necessary and the all-too-common attitude of brushing unpleasant things under the rug and pretending they never happened. As a result, you have people who never learn from their mistakes.
Yet another factor is what is now called “EDSA fatigue,” which is being used to describe how people feel about People Power nowadays. What was once a celebrated event is now either widely mocked or ignored. It may be related to the fact that People Power and EDSA are always associated with the Aquinos and not with the Filipino people anymore. Nobody is saying that Ninoy Aquino didn’t play his part or that Corazon Aquino was an inspiring figure at the time. But recognition of their roles has reached the point of reverence that it’s difficult for some people to view People Power and the Aquinos as separate entities. Therefore, anyone who’s unhappy with the Aquinos, be it Noynoy or Kris, tends to become annoyed with the family and, by extension, People Power. The discussion has become nothing more than red versus yellow, Marcos versus Aquino, Martial Law versus People Power.
And because many people don’t know what happened during Martial Law, even those who lived through it and saw nothing more than carefully planned order and progress that masked the grimy truth, you now have a nation that is fondly looking back on that time. Now you have people who are confusing truth for propaganda and who don’t realize that their criticisms against the government would have gotten them imprisoned and/or tortured during the Martial Law era they praise and long for today.
