To many, maintaining a personal website seems like a relic of a bygone internet. However, doing so now is vital in communicating your unique interests and ideas. To understand the flaws in our current communication methods, we first have to look at where we are.

Over the past two decades, platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube have amassed an enormous amount of creative energy and human attention. Anyone, from a kid down the block to the president of the United States, that wants their creations to reach as wide an audience as possible or to know what everyone is paying attention to, goes to those platforms.

The common thread between those platforms and their growth is the algorithmic feed, which ranks creations based on how likely they would engage people's attention. Creations more likely to interest people become more likely to be found. Thus, having a higher algorithm ranking leads to a higher potential audience, which many creators were keen on obtaining.

Creators began tailoring their creations to match the algorithm's definition of engagement. YouTube videos have heavy use of jump cuts1. While jarring, jump cuts keep the viewer's attention by increasing the tempo of the video. Twitter posters will boil down complex ideas into single sentences. While the idea may lose valuable nuance, their tweets become easier to share and read. Techniques that lead to poor books and films instead fuel creations that rise to the top of the feed.

However, not everything that gets posted to internet platforms sacrifices all integrity for algorithm rank. Platforms are full of interesting and thought-provoking creations. But they exist in spite of the platform, not because of it. Platforms continue to reward creations that appeal to as wide an audience as possible at whatever cost. Even if that is not your goal as a creator, on a platform, you will fight an uphill battle against those who play the algorithm game as the platform gives them additional support and resources. Not playing the platform's game is fighting an uphill battle.

Instead of fighting uphill, fight on your own turf. With your own website, you decide the rules of the game. The value of creation is defined not by an algorithm, but by the owner of the website. Text posts can be 140 or 140,000 characters. Your videos can be fast-paced and energetic or chilled-out and thoughtful. You can define what is valuable and what is worth including in your creation.

Additionally, owning your website lets you control how other people interact with your creation. You choose what posts rise to the top of your site, not an algorithm. You choose who can comment, or if there are even comments at all. Your creations are shown to others as you see it when you create it.

The best part of owning a website is that you are not constrained to a single platform. After all, a site is nothing but a collection of URLs. Whenever you make a new post, just share the URL to Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, wherever. You can be a part of the greater internet while still owning your creations.

That being said, it's not entirely possible to break away from platforms. Whether you engage with them or not, you have to live in a world where a majority of people spend the majority of their time on them. That being said, you have a right to express yourself in whatever format you find compelling. If that format is a standard YouTube video or Instagram post, then by all means use those platforms. But if you want something else, make it. Own your internet presence.