The nature of writing can be an almost unbearable prospect. At least in a conversation, one is only going up against the thoughts of the individual or group they are speaking to. A written work must contend with all other written works in existence, and justify itself as being worthy of being read by the audience, one that the writer does not know or has any control over.
That can lead itself to a certain narcissism on behalf of the writer, for the writer must have the necessary confidence to deliver their voice to the page, on the presumption that the reader will be invested in the premise they suppose. They must be confident of this, in spite of having no true idea whether the reader will have any investment at all. There are of course many things a writer can do to add to their chances; they can study their craft or subject matter very intensely, they can share drafts ad nauseum to a group of A/B testers, they can search and search for the necessary inspiration to give their words a certain passion. But even then, the probability of reeling someone in, even for a professional writer, is small.
It’s made smaller by the onset of the digital age. To quote Sunil Iyengar, writing for the National Endowment for the Arts:
On any given day from 2017 to 2023, the amount of time that Americans aged 15 and older spent reading anything “for personal interest” was roughly 15-16 minutes. Yet, for each year from 2013 to 2015, that amount had exceeded 19 minutes, before slipping to about 17 minutes in 2016. Over the entire measurement span (from 2013 to 2023), by contrast, Americans spent between 2:40 and 2:51 hours watching TV on any given day.
In an environment such as this, attention becomes almost impossible.
I know that I can’t compete with television. I certainly can’t compete with something more supercharged to extract dopamine like TikTok. Most writing can’t.
What digital gardens can help with is to separate the wheat from the chaff; that is, to give recommendations and to highlight what may be worth the reader’s while. In a sea of creation, curation is vital, and it’s more vital now than ever. I can only hope to perserve for the time when someone’s wandering attention may bring its eyes upon one of my own interests.
No Rings Kissed is an attempt at curation beyond the garden walls of what should now be considered ‘traditional’ social media. Hence, the name, which frankly probably comes across as a bit aggressive. It is, of course, a play on Lord of the Rings, but I really just wanted to emphasize the freedom of this work from the reliance of traditional systems that have a vested interest in what I’m exactly publishing.
It’s a deeply simple HTML page, with a design inspired by the ‘7 motherfucking declarations’ from the good folks at Better Motherfucking Website. The domain is hosted by Porkbun and the website is hosted on Github Pages. The newsletter is hosted primarily out of Proton Mail.
I’m aware that I’m still reliant on other peoples’ infrastructure. I’m also aware that any of these services can turn out to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing (see the recent controversy with Proton). But then that’s the nice part about doing (some) of the legwork yourself: I can pick up this ball, this publication, and go somewhere else if I have to. If I were to just post on Facebook, I’d be giving Facebook fairly broad rights to distribute that content as they see fit, even though I still may own that content.
Perhaps more importantly, I’d be indebted to Facebook or any other platform with the content I publish. Namely, I’m giving up my control in visibility, in the knowledge that what I share will be promptly shared with the individuals or groups who choose to subscribe to what I publish. Algorithms, AI mining, and attention economies are problems even with independent publishing, but they are magnified significantly on a platform that has the necessary levers to control all of this. By going out on my own, I can retain at least a little of that freedom.
As such, No Rings Kissed will not be something that exists of this site, or outside of its newsletter. That is, I don’t have much interest in pushing this on social media, and so I will instead rely on word-of-mouth. If I can inspire at least one other person to consider doing the same, or to think about what it would like to make their own digital garden, then I would consider No Rings Kissed a success.
Want this in your mailbox? Mailto here, or follow the prompts here.