In the Shadows

Somebody's out there, but I do not know who.

August 20, 2025

The World Wide Web has changed.

It is a reactionary mindset that gives rise to the belief that change must necessarily be a bad thing, or that we must “return” to a certain ideal past.

There was once a time where finding interesting places on this web would require surfing it, which is a laborious process. At the end of a web surfing journey, one would expect to find something substantive, because why go through all that effort to find something good if you couldn’t properly sink your teeth into it?

Today’s internet is dominated by social apps with infinite timelines and sophisticated curation algorithms. Short-form content—little quips, short videos, funny images—is king. The user experience of today’s social app is one of ease. You don’t need to surf the web to find interesting things anymore, but the abundance of interesting things to find means competition.

When it’s trivially easy to move onto the next novel thing, content must work hard to immediately capture your attention. If your attention is lost, you’ll simply move onto whatever your algorithm has queued up for you next. This process isn’t very mindful—which is fine for the audience that does not seek to commit their time.

This convenience comes at a steep cost, however, and that is the need to log into the app and accept that everything you do is tracked by the platform. Privacy does not exist in these places. Anonymity is effectively impossible. The ancient art of lurking—to read a website anonymously without interacting with other users or contributing anything—is effectively dead.

Today’s platforms demand a certain form of self-censorship from those who seek their audience. This is often touted as a problem, as if there is no choice by to compromise oneself. I think this is the exact wrong approach.

I don’t like social media. I don’t like being tracked. I don’t like being served by an algorithm. I don’t like lacking substantial texts to read. I know I’m not alone.

The World Wide Web has changed.

The majority of the Web’s readership have moved into walled gardens, their attention sated. Most writers have moved to where the audiences are. The stubborn few who remain outside the panopticon are branded weirdos, freaks, and losers.

Hello, weirdos, freaks, and losers.

I write for you because I think you are worth writing for. I write for you, because few others do. Writing for you—the high-investment, low-engagement audience—means striving to write things worth reading, which is exactly what I want to write.

This site is meant to be lurked first and foremost. Get what you want out of it. I will never demand that you make yourself known to me. Only those who cannot help but reach out will do so, and the result is that the few who do reach out often have wonderful, kind, and thoughtful things to say. That, however, is the exception. For most people reading this site: I expect nothing of you.

Whoever you are.