blogging

Warp Point is a directory and webring for independent gaming blogs and newsletters. Unremarkable in 1999 yet almost radical now. Built by Wes Fenlon and Matt Sayer, explicitly modelled on ooh.directory, the idea is to rebuild homegrown networks that fansites and webrings used to foster before recommendation engines flattened everything into a feed of whatever’s already popular.

Worth noting their one editorial line: they’re not accepting Substack submissions, on the grounds that they’d rather build a network effect that doesn’t feed Substack’s platform ambitions. Great choice.

I’ve relaunched my personal site. The one you’re reading. Not a newsletter, not a brand, not a Substack with a paid tier—just a place to put things.

You’ll find writing here, mostly short-form. Book reviews, album notes, the occasional essay when something lodges in my head and won’t leave. Links to things I’ve read and found worth passing along. There’s a timeline on the front page that pulls together everything—posts, film ratings from Letterboxd, books from Goodreads, games from Backloggd—into something resembling a log of what I’m paying attention to.

The design is intentionally quiet. Serif type, warm colours, no sidebar full of widgets demanding your attention. It’s meant to feel like a website rather than a platform, which is a distinction that shouldn’t need making but increasingly does.

I built the thing that runs this site, which is either admirable or pathological depending on your perspective. There’s a project post about that if you’re curious about the how. This post is more concerned with the why: I wanted somewhere to write that didn’t belong to anyone else, looked the way I wanted it to look, and didn’t try to optimise my words for engagement.

That’s it. No publishing schedule, no promises about frequency. Things will appear here when they appear.

Permalinks are commonplace on the web. But it took the rise of blogging to codify them, and bring them out into the world. And it all started with a single exchange of blogs.

This essay is also available on my Substack. Subscribe here: https://kevinkelly.substack.com/ In my professional life, I’ve had several bestselling books published by New York publishers, as well as many other titles that sold modestly. I have also self-published a bunch … Continue reading →