Feesl.com has existed in some form or another since around 1998. Originally I wanted to create an online home for my family, and offer free services to members. But no one took me up on my offer, and I wasn’t a programmer so I couldn’t really build new things.
Then I began blogging, and I was good at it. I added email hosting and tried to get family involved again, and they politely listened to me, but didn’t take me up on it.
I added forum functions and other hosting functions, and continued to develop it, but it continued to be my online home, and only my online home.
Then my career started veering more and more into corporate America, and because companies started paying more and more attention to what online presence an employee has, I started scaling back my interactions.
Eventually, I stopped blogging. Everything was so political, and I was just so busy at work with all the things, I just focused on my “professional life” – and this site languished.
But I couldn’t get rid of the site.
After my last position got eliminated, and I exited the corporate world again, I decided to revamp this site.
I’ve tried blogging since, but I had many false starts, and kept rehashing tired old whiny stories. (See above.)
So it kinda looked like it was going to fizzle out.
But recently (2020-ish) the tech companies started screwing with the Internet.
Well, they had already been screwing with it for years, trying to monetize every click and load and view and interaction. But then AI appeared, and started REALLY screwing with things.
Not only did AI start by absorbing massive amounts of content from the Internet to “train” (build) the datasets and models used to automate writing and drawing and musical creation, but they did so in questionable ways that should’ve resulted in payments to artists, but didn’t. And now they refuse to address that theft.
Because of the bullshit machines and their “hallucinations” (read: bullshit) the Internet, in general, stopped being reliable.
All so people could use the Internet as a money-making machine. So they wouldn’t have to work, but they could collect the paychecks.
And the primary purpose of AI is to do the writing, drawing, and musical composition work automatically, to make it cheaper for those who just wanted the Internet to print them money.
Google now ranks search results by how much revenue is generated from links, ignoring relevance to the search terms. It also provides “AI summaries” of search results, with the expected bullshit mixed in with valuable results, and no way to differentiate. Not just Google, almost all searches do this.
And “news sites” stopped providing news, and started providing stories that filled the space between ads, and pushed for clicks and engagement, usually by making people angry and suggesting other “articles” (collections of ads spaced out by garbage words) to click on, to collect more ad revenue.
And platforms for artists started integrating AI into their structures, refusing to reassure the artists that their work wouldn’t be used to train future iterations of AI.
And, and, and…. It’s all just gone swirling.
But the Internet didn’t always rely on anyone other than the people posting things.
So, I’m recreating this website in the spirit of the turn of the millennium: websites that point to other websites, that curate interests and explorations that can enrich the human experience. People freely promoting each other.
So, yeah, that’s what this is about. Words, sometimes pictures, on a site, to foster connections between people. Connections that don’t rely on subscriptions/fees and microtransactions and monetization.
I don’t expect this to change the behavior of the Big Guys. I don’t expect to start a revolution. I fully expect them to ignore this site, or maybe do a little feel good “Good for you!” moment, and then leave me in my dark little corner.
Thanks for reading, and I hope you find other things to read on this site, or that you find other sites as you click hop from here.
I hope I can stay the course on this journey, and help you on yours.
Skåll!!!