# Philosophy
[2026-05-13_philosophy]

Modified: 2026-06-22 @ 12:51:36 (Monday)
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#meta

## § The Golden Rule ^

I try to follow a sort of Golden Rule of design: pnppl.cc should be the kind of website that I myself would want to see.

This is not entirely altruistic. Ethically speaking, the Golden Rule is narcissistic and encourages projection: you should really treat others how they want to be treated. It's a good rule for approaching a personal website, though, which exists first and foremost for your own benefit.

The other people your website benefits are largely unknowable. What they would have done unto them is determined, in part, by the design decisions you make, since they apply a selective pressure. In other words, it's sort of a chicken-and-egg problem: In order to cater to others, you need an imaginary average visitor; in order to imagine your average visitor, you need to take into account who your website attracts.

Given all this, you might as well just create according to your own preferences and make your website attractive to people like yourself.

There is an altruistic aspect, though. Being a good Kantian means not spying on or advertising to your visitors. It means making it accessible, since you would still want to use a website even if you developed a new disability, moved to a different part of the world with worse infrastructure, became impoverished and limited to old hardware, or for some other reason began interacting with the internet in an unusual way.

The internet kind of sucks. A personal website is an opportunity to be the change you want to see in the world.

## § You're Boring ^

https://pearstheband.bandcamp.com/track/you-re-boring

This site will never have an "about me" page. I hate filling out those boxes. I don't know how to sum myself up and never feel that my attempts succeed. There's an undeniable vibe that I'm marketing myself, like I'm making a résumé or going to a job interview, two of the most horrific activities ever invented by our horrible species. When I read someone's bio, my reaction is usually "uhhhhh cool who cares jerkoff motion".

There's no point, either. I could tell you I'm trans, or you could just figure it out by reading one of my many posts where I talk about it and where it's actually pertinent. If you're not sure if I'll post about topics that interest you, skim through the titles. This is not social media or a dating website. The website is the "product", not me. I aspire to make good stuff, not to make myself legible.

Writing about yourself usually isn't very interesting, especially to total strangers. It's like describing a dream you had. These posts should be avoided, as should meta posts (like this one); they're self-indulgent. There's nothing wrong with indulging yourself, but like, you gotta eat something besides chocolate sometimes, you know?

That's not to say that one should ever shy away from sharing their perspective. Your perspective is completely unique. In fact, you could say that it's the only thing you have to offer the world; everything you make is filtered through it. It's much more interesting to see that filter in action than to read a description of it.

## § Haymaze in a Needlestack ^

99% of everything is shit. On the internet, it's closer to 100%, and most of the shit is actively aggressive: it spies on you, tries to rip you off, intentionally wastes your time, and contributes to a stifling dystopian capitalist monoculture. Call me a hipster, but I love finding cool stuff nobody's ever heard of, and these finds feel even more rewarding when fished out of the Saw-like needlestack that is the internet.

Compelling websites are often compared to rabbit holes that draw you deeper and deeper with each successive page. You look at the clock and realize you've been clicking around and reading for like six fucking hours, yet your time doesn't feel wasted the way it would if you'd spent that time scrolling a feed. Some people notice this and draw the wrong conclusion: that a website should be difficult to navigate, full of blind alleys. But it's the actual stuff that makes these sites good, not their arrangement. Bad navigation is just... bad navigation. I want a haymaze, not a warren: invite me to wander around, get lost, hold hands, and discover small charming details; but I should still be able to consult a map and pop my head up over the bales.

## § Visuals and Semantics ^

My site's look is very much inspired by Windows 9x. I didn't do this for nostalgia purposes --- fuck nostalgia --- but because I genuinely love the design. I still use it on my computer. I've used this same interface, more or less, for approximately my entire life. Not only is it highly functional and non-distracting, grey is pretty, and you get a 3D effect for free just by changing the border colors.

But a website is not an operating system (usually) and I find it weirdly frustrating when a website looks too much like one. They will never behave quite the same, given that the website is trapped in your browser, so it's kind of confusing. I'm especially annoyed by purely decorative buttons. If you're gonna put an X in the corner, it should close the fake window!

These days, every website wants to be an "app", but most of them should just be documents --- the way the web originally worked. The now-dying standards for a site's behavior are very good:

- Links are blue and underlined; visited links are purple. (I clearly remember when Google consciously decided to ruin this. It held firm as a standard despite not being technically required until they opened the floodgates.)
- Hitting Back in your browser takes you to the last page you were on. Hitting Forward goes forward.
- Pages are sprinkled liberally with anchors so that you can move back/forward within a document without losing your place, or jump ahead to a specific area.

So, I don't want my 9x design to be too overbearing. This is a website, not a Pentium. Links should look like links; if they aren't blue and underlined, they need another strong indicator (like a psuedo-3D gray button design). Every link should turn purple when visited: not only is it practical, it also makes the website prettier as you read, since purple is the best color. The only exception is for ones styled as buttons --- reserved for repetitive navigation elements that don't benefit from the purplification breadcrumb trail --- though I was tempted to make them turn purple too.

## § Copy Me ^

Our world has been infected with a brain virus that makes you believe ridiculous things, like that copying is stealing. If we're going to indulge in superstition, copying is much closer to a holy sacrament than some metaphysical act of theft. It's an honor for someone to think your creation is valuable enough to copy.

Copying is also the only chance you have for your work to outlive you. If you want to ensure your site is totally forgotten, make it really hard to copy. Put in lots of JavaScript and CSS so people can't select the text or right-click the images. Ban curl's useragent. Opt out of the Wayback Machine. Add DRM. Hide it behind Cloudflare and Anubis. Put up lots of hostile copyright notices. Sue people who respect your work enough to copy it --- or even be inspired by it. If you put in enough effort, you usually can stop the signal; if nothing else, you can waste a lot of someone's time by making them jump through hoops.

If you would prefer not to rob future humans of your work, you should do the opposite. Make it clear that people are encouraged to copy. Instead of erecting barriers, install trampolines.

Incidentally, you can download this website's HTML, the text files it's built from, an ebook version, or its entire source code. You can repost it, improve it, hell you can even plagiarize it if you want. Give it to your friends. Give it to your enemies. Get a bunch of free flash drives from Micro Center and scatter copies of it all over your local park. Print it out and mail it to the FBI in a suspicious envelope.

I'm not interested in a legacy, but I do believe in what I say and would like for those beliefs to proliferate.

## § Backlinks ^

## § See Also ^