On My website is a shifting house next to a river of knowledge. What could yours be? by Laurel Schwulst. Covering websites, metaphors, the meaning of life, creations, passion, and becoming. In the age of information overload, THE ULTIMATE LUXURY IS MEANING AND CONTEXT. – Louis Rossetto Honestly, after going over all the metaphors Laurel uses there, although there are a few that linger in my mind, all I'd like to conclude is "websites are metaphors!" Jokes aside, the relationship between a website and its "metaphors" seems to me, actually, nothing new—both in terms of my own websites and metaphors and, more importantly, how other media have been metaphors in history. For example, I would say it's perfectly legit to claim a passage of text on the paper to be a room, a shelf, a plant, etc., as long as one is clever enough to come up with an interpretation of the text and build connections between that interpretation and the metaphor. I could also say that a press or a journal is a house next to a river of knowledge/opinion/bullshit/etc. Just to make a point. The thing is, for me, someone who is prone to unconsciously devising ostensibly legitimate rationales and metaphors for my own actions as well as external events, cautioning may be a worthwhile focus. By all means, I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with having metaphors or other substitutes to guide our creation (of course, including creating websites) when the metaphors are indeed instrumental to the process. On the other hand, if one (in this case, I) gets too fascinated by the metaphor, it's likely to be worse off for sure. That said, there is this metaphor Laurel uses that I found quite appealing: Website as thrown rock that’s now falling deep into the ocean. Let's be realistic for a moment—I dare claim that 99.99...% of the websites out there won't be visited by anyone other than their owner/creator (maybe plus a few individuals who know the owner/creator). Then the question becomes why we are still building them if so scarcely will they be visited. I guess everyone has their own answer to this question, and I think the thrown rock metaphor would be a nice starting point (although Laurel does not use it exactly as I do here). If a website is a thrown rock that’s now falling deep into the ocean, presumably the previous question could be transcribed into why we will throw rocks into the ocean using the language of that metaphor. I do hope this sounds like a question with some simpler answers. We throw simply because we want to. Sometimes there aren't any myths behind the things. We wanted it, so we did it. We needed it, so we did it. We felt it, so we did it. And eventually, even if we wanted/needed/felt nothing, we were just there and threw the rock into the ocean. Building a website, in this sense, can be nothing special compared to throwing a rock into the ocean—and this could also be the case for any creation, or, in fact, putting it a bit exaggerated, for anything, including the meaning of life. Frankly speaking, I'm escalating this matter only because those metaphors Laurel uses in the article triggered me in terms of how I myself tend to use metaphors and carefully concocted rationales to justify many of my interests, hobbies, and behaviors in general—including building websites. Again, not to say it's bad or wrong, just to be cautious: Taking music as an example: although I used quite a few passages to discuss my relationship with it, claiming the choice, and they seemed quite solid and sound back then (not to say they are wrong now, though), facing the fact that I almost haven't been practicing guitar or performing for two semesters doesn't make me feel so bad, surprisingly. A friend of mine who gapped for a year to reapply to Peabody (JHU) asked me a few months ago if I ever had the "passion" for music. And my answer was NO. I love music still—I listen to music; I enjoy music; I share music; I do music; and I produce music. And this doesn't matter with the fact that I never felt the "passion passion"—the kind of passion that imbues one with the illusion of "that's all I'm for" (—or as an authentic belief for those lucky ones). The point is, I don't believe we, or at least I, need to do things out of passion. And I would even argue that "passion" is some ephemeral thing. Back then, when I switched from physics to music as one of the six classes in my IB diploma, I didn't make the decision because I had the "passion" for music. It was simply because I was greedy enough to force a reason to keep playing—and that greediness is simply a part of my nature hitherto. In other words, it's a choice for survival purposes instead of "passion." (Some may favorably consider this kind of sense to be exactly what "passion" is—I would much appreciate that, but insist the "passion" I'm referring to is something else). The point is, with all that irrelevant stuff said, maybe we should admit that our creation here, including building websites, and the initiative/desire/passion behind it, may never be fixed or long-lasting anyways. And that's exactly why we keep building, finding, and fighting—for one and another new incoming. Picking up from the thrown rock metaphor, a possibly better version, in my opinion, will be a spaceship launched, flying endlessly and directionlessly in the universe. Compared to the dead rock in the ocean, that spaceship may actually encounter some happenings (or not), and those happenings, if any, are destined to be chaotic in the universe of the web. Therefore, I believe this metaphor/stance simultaneously answers the question of whether a site is only for/by artists/engineers/etc. There is nothing special about building a site anyway, and, of course, nothing special about who we are to build a site—even if it ends up having zero strange viewers, can't we simply build and create for building and creating's purposes—nothing more and nothing less? This universality is probably where I tend to agree the most with Laurel, while containing the urge to criticize how the rest of the article is laced with neo-lib/progressive tidbits and the fact that the web is honestly nothing "for all" anymore, but an oligarchically dominated machine. Although one could also argue: Arguably, the personal website is more important than social media platforms (though not, of course, than email, which is the face of work today), since at least its structure – not its distribution – is independent of the platforms of huge corporations like Facebook/Instagram, Tumblr/Yahoo!, or Google. From Orit Gat | Are.na , originally in Scroll, Skim, Stare - The White Review . The choice is yours—and mine?