One of the great lessons I learned at a young age is that I shouldn't worry about fashion. At a certain point in my life I decided that I don't care about new and improved fashion and fashion trends. I like wearing loose fitting pants, I like t-shirts with fun designs, and I like pockets. I decided this sometime in high school, and I've pretty much lived my life like this since. It's not an old man thing either, it's a thing I've been doing since my 20s.
The reason I like this is because it also affects the way I design and make art. As well as how I build and manage any presence I have on the internet. People have repeatedly told me that I should move Candy Critic to a new blogging platform, or that I should focus my reviews onto YouTube or various other websites. I've been told that the day of having your own website was dead, and now it's all about living on social media platforms.
That was until a few days ago when things at Twitter changed. I'm not predicting the end of Twitter, or even casting any kind of judgement. I'm not suggesting you leave, and I don't mind that you're staying. I've just been reading a lot about changes in social media, and maybe changes that aren't for the better. Meta has also announced reductions in staff. I'm not wishing harm to either of these companies, I use all of their services both professionally and personally. I'm just not panicking either.
The main part of Candy Critic, the reviews are hosted on in a place that I control. If for some reason (and again I'm hoping for this) all of the social media giants just stopped, I would still have a website that I control with no outside plug-ins or anything else.
When I was first building websites, there was writer who talked about the most important lesson he'd ever learned. He had a website where many of the photos he was using were hosted on a photo hosting website and not his own site. Then for reasons beyond his control, that photo website suddenly went out of business. He spent months trying to reconnect his photos to his website. He then wrote an essay on the subject, as I am now, and his final advice was that you should always have full control of the content on your website because it is yours. Ever since then I've always made sure that the reviews for Candy Critic are always totally under my own control.
So that's why I'm not worried about the fate of social media or any tech trend of the time. None of them are permanent, and something better will always come along. The thing for me is that no matter what comes along candycritic.org will always be there. It all comes back to wearing my cargo pants and fun t-shirts. I like having Candy Critic being my own, even if the coding is a little behind the times. I like it because just like my pockets, I always know that I can use them.
Later