welcome!
hi! thanks for stopping by.
i'm Surge, just some goofy little gay with a website. sometimes i make art, sometimes i write, but mostly i'm just vibing. the art section of my site is still a work-in-progress, at the moment.
why have a personal website?
the modern personal website is, to me, part creative project and part protest. i'm choosing to branch out beyond the walls of the corporate web and social media that cares about nothing more than profits. i want to be more than a number on a chart for ad engagement, a mindless consumer gulping down whatever Corporate decides i deserve to see. i want to have fun online, because that's what the internet is for.
there are others who have made this point much more eloquently than i can: see the Yesterweb Manifesto, the 32-bit Cafe mission statement, and IndieWeb. but i am, in short, saying "fuck you" to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and every other platform that sucks the soul out of the web to feed the wallets and egos of a handful of billionaires.
does this mean i think all social media, and everything about it, is universally bad? do i look down on people who use it? no! there are benefits to social media, and it's become such a large part of daily life for us that it would be foolish to say we should just get rid of it cold turkey forever. there are many good things that have happened in my life because of social media; i wouldn't have met my husband without it. but "social media is not inherently evil" and "the internet should not be reduced to a few platforms owned by rich people who hate us" are two ideas that can, and should, coexist.
so, the reason for this site's existence is for me to do and say whatever i want, free from the constraints of the corporate internet. on my own website, i can exist as a queer person without worrying about whether or not the people in charge think my mere existence is adult content. i can revel in the endless creativity of other webmasters like me. if that sounds cool to you...you can make a website too! it's fun :)
anyway...
my about page is the place to go if you want to get to know me a little better. you can find me on other websites via the links in that fancy little box at the top of this page. you can also e-mail me to get in touch directly! because of my Mental Problems™, i sometimes disappear for a while or take a long time to respond to messages, but i do like to talk to people.
you can also check out my first-ever webring, the Transmasculine Pride Webring.
more stuff is on the way as i continue to work on this site. for now, explore what's here, and if you want to be affiliates, send me a message!
site updates
- 2023.NOV.16
- new journal entry about my top surgery experience.
- 2023.NOV.13
- got a new journal section up and running, now hosted on my site :)
- 2023.NOV.11
- new site layout; no longer using iframes!
- 2023.NOV.6
- added a new "extras" section to the site, and a recipes page!
- 2023.SEP.22
- made some layout changes that had been bugging me for a while :)
- 2023.JUL.8
- added a feed from my Mastodon account. how often will i use it? i don't know!
- 2023.MAR.26
- new layout...again! i liked my previous layout a lot, but it used scripts that made things load slower than i'd like.
- 2023.MAR.2
- did a ton of work on a gallery system for art+photos and spiffed up the site layout a bit.
- 2023.FEB.17
- added a blog. don't know how much i'll use it, though.
- 2023.FEB.16
- after fighting for my life with various PHP-based gallery scripts, i just said Fuck It and macguyvered something together myself. so now i have a working art gallery!
- 2023.FEB.13
- new layout is deployed and (mostly) functional! super pleased with the result.
- 2023.FEB.11
- began working on a new layout! also got my partner set up with a site of his own.
friends and cool sites
