I’ve been trying to make this website look a bit more modern. I don’t know if I’ve succeeded, but as with any project like this, it’s a work in progress. Tastes in web design change over time, and what was popular five years ago now seems old-fashioned.
I don’t know if we’re yet in the same territory as clothing fashion, where trends come around again every ten, twenty or thirty years, but I hope not because we all remember how awful the web looked back in 2004, right? Remember those MySpace pages? Or Geosites/Tripod pages?
Yeah, I hope we don’t go back to that.
I can’t see how we ever could, though. The internet is a very different place now than twenty years ago. Back then, many people had a “personal” website on which to express themselves, but these days, that expression is done on social media. And even that isn’t static. Where once MySpace ruled, Facebook took over but now, the cool kids see Facebook as a website for their parents and grandparents. Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, Tumblr, and TikTok have all had their day as the top app amongst the young, only to be usurped by something else. That’s usually because “adults” discover the service and move in, so the kids run off somewhere else to get away from them.
Plus Ca Change.
And amongst the adults? Tumblr was once the place to go for niche content, but it was bought by a corporation that didn’t understand it, and it died. Twitter was once the place for breaking news and coverage of ongoing events, then it got bought by a billionaire and turned into a hell site full of extremists.
Essentially, the problem with all these platforms is, ultimately, people. The users feel free to be “themselves” and often “themselves” are not very pleasant.
Plus Ca Change. Encore.
Even though I don’t post here very often, I maintain this website as a last refuge where I can pontificate on things when I feel the need to. It’s a “Mental Health” thing. I started it when I was about 36. I know that because there are articles on here dating back to 2010. I was a different person back then. Quite “Angry Young Man” in a lot of ways. But the world was different back then, too. For example, there are reviews of an episode of “X-Factor” in that category.
In 2010, X-Factor was “appointment TV”. We all sat in front of the television at the same time and watched a show as it was broadcast. That was, in fact, the way we watched most TV. “On Demand” was available but wasn’t really a thing, if you know what I mean. The BBC iPlayer had launched 3 years earlier, but it was still a novelty rather than a go to app–not like it is today.
In 2024, I couldn’t tell you the last time I watched the Six o’Clock News at six o’clock. I usually just load up the iPlayer when I get in from work and watch it while I’m cooking or eating the evening meal with the family, which might be at half-six, seven or even later.
Doctor Who is another example. When the current version of the show launched in 2005, you either had to watch it when it was shown or record it on your VCR (remember those?) This year, I didn’t watch a single episode when it was broadcast. I watched all of them at a time of my choosing.
In 2024, TV schedules work around your life, not vice versa. Sometimes, it feels as if we have lost something. We get a sense of “collectiveness” from knowing everyone is simultaneously subjected to the same plot twist. Twitter was great for that. Everyone jumps on the hashtag for the show and sees what other people are thinking about a particular show in real time. That doesn’t happen now. Well, not very often.
It does happen on Friday evenings in the UK. That’s when BBC Four broadcasts old episodes of Top of the Pops, and sad oldies like me tune in to watch and reminisce about how cool we used to be in our youth.
2010 was significant for another reason–it’s the year of the General Election that saw David Cameron replace Gordon Brown as Prime Minister. Fourteen years of horrific government later, I’m a little bit ashamed to say I voted Tory in that election. But, like I said, I was a different person back then, and Cameron felt like a young, fresh vision of Britain’s future compared to a rather dour Brown, who felt like he represented the past.
How wrong I was. How different would the last fourteen years have been had Brown been able to forge that coalition with Clegg instead of Cameron?
I have made political posts on this blog before, and I probably should have made more of them over the past six or seven years when I’ve been more angry with the government and the state of the country than I’ve ever been before. It was desperately depressing to see the mess made of things by politicians of my generation (and the voters that put them in power) that was going to be left to my son’s generation to ultimately clean up.
I can’t really tell you why I didn’t vent on here more often. Maybe it was more painful to sit and write about things than it was cathartic. Venting on twitter, in those short bursts of anger, was a better release.
I know I say this a lot, but I really do need to make the effort of write on here more. It doesn’t even really need to be about anything. Not really. Random, rambling thoughts will do. It’s the effort that counts.
