Alex's Newisms

or Alex's New Isms

In what is either the worst or the most ineffectual decision of my life, I'm aspiring to write here daily. I've been an Online Poster for my entire life, as is common these days, but lately I've been posting online less. It feels like the options are to either contribute to public discourse and sacrifice my own dignity to Content, or to never post at all, and to live in peace. However, I don't want to give up my dignity OR my voice, so I will be posting here instead, to an audience of whoever ends up here.

This blog's approach is inspired by many things, but there are two inspirations that I want to share with you right now:

1. Cory Doctorow's 2021 blog post entitled "The Memex Method"
2. The present "indie web renaissance" or "small web movement" that has rose to prominence in response to the deleterious effects of large social media companies on society.

That said, I also think that I was probably at my Wordsthinkingest during a phase in my life when I wrote 10k words daily just to feel I had achieved something. Since then, I feel like my brain has become both more chaotic and less capable of stringing together coherent thoughts. Part of this is social media, of course, but another part of it has been brain fog lasting since I got Covid for the first time. Reading and writing dedicatedly has helped with that a lot, as well as humbling myself to be social and speak my mind even when I feel my wits will fail me.

The inspiration for the name itself is something that I aspire to: not newism in a tech-optimism type way, but in the sense that I must believe in the human capability to create new ideas and in doing so strike upon better ideas. The impetus for choosing "new ideas" as my guiding light is twofold: first is that all that people do (good and bad) is inspired by somebody who had the idea and spoke it, and second is that I believe people in American culture feel heavily discouraged from having and sharing their own original thoughts (...even though they are encouraged and empowered to speak loudly). I don't believe cringe CAN die, but I think the urge to cringe at oneself must be overcome, and killed if possible.

I am a paranoid coward, so I must attempt to be bold.