There was a post I made a couple years back. In it, I told you all to get a fucking blog. To summarize that post, the reason you should do this is because in doing so, you can establish your own online identity without the information overload that comes with places like Twitter and Facebook. The ability to express yourself or an opinion without the constant bull shit discourse that gives you a headache at best and will literally destroy a persons life at worst is something that’s been lost lo these many years.

Something that’s been said to me whenever I beg people to get the fuck off of shitty internet holes that hurt you is, “Ramona, that sounds good, but I have no idea where to begin!” So here we go, part 2 to a post I did not realize needed a part 2; I will help you find a new home on The Wired.

PART 1- GET A BLOG

If you are someone like me who is clearly in love with the sound of their own voice, maybe you want a platform that encourages a long-form communication of ideas, and not being restricted to only 240 characters, leading to the dreaded and much-hated-by-me “Tweet Chain.” You want a Web Blog. If you have a little bit of money on you, you can spend a bit of money on hosting for your own domain name and even your own web storage, as this web site does. But if you don’t feel like spending $120 (or whatever other hosts charge) a year (and I don’t blame you), there are at least two good free options that can get you what you need.

The first one is WordPress. This blog uses WordPress software, so I can at least vouch for it working well enough. It looks like the free version does not have the range of features that something like this would have, and it is ad-supported (but we all have ad blocker, right?), but it should be enough for what you need.

There’s also Blogger. Looking around online, this might be a better option if you are not feeling like dropping some money on something you only plan on using to talk about which Touhou girls you want to have as a mom someday. I have not touched Blogger in literally over a decade, but when I did, it seemed easy enough to use, and it’s probably gotten better over time.

I was going to talk about Ghost, the other blogging software. But in the few years since I heard of it, the front page turned into some weird venture capitalist shit and I have no fucking clue if there’s a free option because the site itself is a goddamn mess. Maybe look into it on your own if WP and Blogger aren’t suited for your needs.

PART 2- WHAT ABOUT A PERSONAL WEB SITE, INSTEAD?

Alright, maybe you don’t want to write a bunch of words down all the time, but you still want to have a place to post stuff you’ve made or stuff you like. Sounds like you want a web site rather than a web log. These days, there’s only one option for that: Neocities. It is the closest the internet can get to the old days of Web 1.0 until there’s a massive overthrow of every tech company in America.

You can get a site on Neocities and make it look like some twenty year old Geocities trash, or make it look sleek as fuck. I’ve never used it myself, as I’ve never needed to, but from what I am told, it is extremely easy to use.

PART 3- THE FEDIVERSE STILL EXISTS

Now, what if social media still has its poisonous claws latched onto you? What if you want to get the hell off the bad sites everyone expects you to use, but you still want the endorphins from likes and retweets? Well, there is still a decentralized thing called the “Mastodon Fediverse.” Okay, I know that even mentioning the term “Fediverse” causes everyone to look at you as if you just murdered a dog and fucked the corpse in full public view, but hear me out.

I admit that process of joining is a bit on the complicated side. You have to find a good instance to join, and hope that either they’re accepting new members, or you know a guy who knows a guy that can get you an invite. There is no single “Mastodon” to join. That’s the hard part. But otherwise, it’s mostly Twitter but without the Twitter.

However, because this is still a social media outlet, it is still beholden to some of the problems inherent to the format; I mean, hell, I made a big post about leaving the site for a time last year because too many Twitter refugees turned it into a performative hell hole. Since that time, though, it has become much easier to ignore the bull shit discourse. As such, my account has mostly been “played a game today” or “watched a show and it was pretty cool” without having to see literal teenagers or mentally aged teenagers annoy me again. So, you know, tread carefully on this one.

Now you got no goddamn excuse. I want more sites to put onto my RSS reader! Make your own web site!