ongoing thoughts & findings
Philosophy of making a website
A neocities (geocities?) website is always becoming. The creator keeps adding pieces of their life, mind, thoughts, views on the webpage, brick by brick, and finally, achieving something big.The index, or navigation, is thus not a pre-designed structure, but a place to hold all the entrance to locations while they emergent.
Website Update - I'm watching nana and I'm adding a "Lore" page to my website
I started watching nana, an old niche but yet became viral lately anime. Many punks and, according to the chinese internet, subculture kids, are inspired and obsessed with nana's style. Then I thought, I should update things I enjoyed - media, cigarettes, spots in the city - to my website! Cuz why not? It's now my lore page. It's (gonna be?) every piece of me from the world.
I wanna be an artist so bad. I wanna have a style, not only of my outfit. I wanna be a brand. I wanna know who I am.
Alice Longyu Gao sure has a style, and she's hip. Van goph has a style too. And Monet, you can recognize his work from 10 meters a way. I, in my 20, been drawing for 10 years, yet don't have a consistant style and don't know what I care about. I was afraid of creating art in my high school year. Back then, like every stereotypical asian kid, I thought getting a decent offer from a uni, then a high-wage job, is my main quest. I tried to make drawing my career, and yes I fought with my parents for this decision. I was traumatized, both by the fight with my parent, and the game art industry. The tutor that gave advice on my college portfolio, kept telling me I'm not good enough, I'm not working hard enough. I guess he just had a high expectation on me, but I've been depressed since 14, and I disappointed everyone. I was my own art's biggest hater.
I'm afraid to be myself. Now that I grow up, some how healed and some how still bleeding. My brain knows I should go after what I really want, and live my life, but my panicing little heart doesn't. So I'll practise my first step: create something everyday (create more than you absorb!!) and set up a website about ✨me✨! I hate people having big ego, but I do need a bigger one.
New Discovery - Digging into the internet, reveal censored literacies
I read the corpse of an article today. The title was Shura Burtin: A Group Portrait in the Dark — Why Do Russians Support This War?, posted in Mandarin. It was first posted on WeChat media platform on 2020-11-10 and deleted five days later. Now preserved on freewechat via greatfire.org.
I first found internet archive a few weeks ago, when I search wang kar wai's fallen angel (1995) with Google. Then I got obssessed with "surfing the internet" using wayback machine, pretending it's the 90s. Not even mentioning it's anti-big data algorythm vibe, It preserves all the deleted, banned, and lost websites for decades. I found newspapers from 1940s, even earlier. I typed freedom in mandarin, and then, it direct me to freewechat, where I found a lot of fascinating articles.
I believe censorship kills creativity. I grow up in China, where there oppressive nature intrude every piece of citizens life. The internet, as both the alter to physical space for citizen's life, and for a society's political discourse to happen, is thus under the government's vigorous surveillance and interferance. In the last 10 years, the mainstream media inside the great fire wall, had become a brainwash machine serving the authorities: Not just to cover up social events, but to distort public perception over every. big or small, public or private part of the world. I admire and appreciate this website. We share the vision. Just like its slogan: “This content is legally viewable due to freedom of speech,” which satirizes the message shown on domestic internet platforms when content is censored: “This content is not displayed due to sensitivity.”
As a feminist in China, I was a "pinky" who deeply believed in the ruling ideologies and the lies as a child, until the Tangshan restaurant assault incident and the Xuzhou chained woman case. These incidents occurred around the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, when people were spending a great deal of time on online forums, which led to intense public discussion. The authorities continuously censored speech in an attempt to divert public attention.Independent journalists, influencers, and others who tried to investigate or ask questions on-site faced numerous obstacles. That was the first time I realized that in this country, I—as a woman—could be severely beaten on the street for no reason, or trafficked for decades with no way out. And the authorities not only allowed this system of oppression to exist, but didn’t even bother to put on a pretense when facing public outrage.
After all the knowledge and education on freespeech and democracy, I started to believe a society needs freespeech. Freespeech is the soil that allow truth to grow, and truth does matters. I now constantly follow articles, books, and people that are banned, not just in China. Freespeech is the deepest root of my political view, my belief, my practice, my life and my art.