ABOUT THERAPHOSIDAE
named after my love for tarantulas, this site is designed specifically to cater to me! yay!! most people with a personal site have one for similar reasons; a longing for the internet that was and a distaste for the internet of today. i am no exception to this! i was (perhaps unfortunately) born too soon to experience what i am attempting to foster firsthand, as a disclaimer. i am likely preaching to the choir, but i am going to talk about what drove me to step away from most social media, and start growing this space for myself.
as the web has become a fundamental part of our day-to-day, it has become increasingly monetizable. corporations work to make their users dependent on them, and then they work to wring all the money possible out of them, gleefully sacrificing what made their service good in the process. it is no longer about serving their userbase, and it hasn't been for a while, as far as i can tell. the scope of websites people use has narrowed drastically as people come to rely on a certain few. these sites are, the majority of the time, hostile to their userbase; their developers are often bigoted and become more focused on profit as time goes on. they have the power to change anything about their product at a moments notice, and they do; every month or so another useless ui change is pushed out across major platforms. on social platforms in particular, the user's self expression is barred (behind paywalls or altogeher). in the words that they speak - censorship of certain words/topics, as users fear for post or account deletion as punishment for not speaking in a family-friendly manner. censorship in general and the way in which grabs for more of your personal data are presented as a protection for children have become more and more prevalent. the idea that children need to be protected in such a manner is silly; especially given the lack of child-orientated spaces online that are not attempts to leech money out of children through microtransactions. users are limited in aesthetic areas too; most sites offer you a profile image and, if you're lucky, a banner, and that is all. there is very little customisation! it's boring!
none of these problems carry through to personal websites, however. i am free to speak, express, decorate, and expand however i like. no limitations! just a personally curated space specially for me : 3.
you may have noticed that, as of right now, all of this site's pages look very similar. they are decorated simplistically, and have very little structure. this is not to be forever! hopefully! i am just getting this site up on its feet and into a place where i feel comfortable updating and expanding it regularly. then i will work on breathing a little more life into it! eventually, i hope to create a collection of webpages which are all decorated in the exact way i'd like them to be. that preference may change, as i change. maybe i'll end up with a list of archived and remade pages a mile long... i want to shake off consistency and work towards sincerity. i'm excited to see what happens!