This article will self-destruct
What a self-erasing website can teach us about writing better stories
Ok, imagine this. You’re traveling and you’re in an Airbnb somewhere and the internet goes down.
You stop typing and get up and look out the window to see if the world is still there. Because, frankly, something big must have happened. The internet is down. A tsunami maybe or a rogue meteor, Siberia-bound.
But the world outside still exists. Birds are chirping. Trams are grinding along. A gentle waft of exhaust from a hell-bent Audi tickles your nose.
Everything is fine.
Except the internet is down.
The full scope of the situation is beginning to sink in now.
Forget that Gdoc you were just editing. You can’t check your email. What if someone is trying to reach you? You can’t check your Twitter either. What if someone followed you?
You’re lost. Marooned in Airbnb space time. In fact, you might as well not even exist.
Sure, your flesh and blood organism will continue to circulate through the brick and mortar world, taking care of its bodily needs, but your virtual existence? Fading. Soon your digital heartbeat will slow. Your online presence will begin to atrophy. Day by day, hour by hour, people’s fingers will forget you.
How long would it take, do you think? To stop existing digitally?
The self-destructing website
Envelope-pushing digital artist FemmeAndroid is giving their latest creation 86,400 seconds, or one day. That’s how much “alone time” their website This Website Will Self-Destruct has until it deletes itself, along with all its content.
The interface is bare bones: a second counter, a hand-drawn message box to read messages and another to leave them. Users are encouraged to post whatever’s on their mind. And, as I said, if for a full day they don’t say anything, everything goes.
So, if you ever wondered how an unhappily married person with a foot fetish who’s thinking about going “full Bruce Wayne” and moving “to the Far East for a bit” feels, here’s the place to find out.
Find out and never see again. Because posts on TWWSD aren’t archived, so they aren’t searchable. They pop up randomly and then disappear forever in digital space.
It isn’t all weirdness. There’s a lot of straight-forward coronavirus talk.
I’ve been in quarantine for a little over 5 weeks now. Haven’t seen anyone outside of my parents and have been stressing about school work. Even though there are some bozos out there not following stay at home orders, I have faith that this will be over soon and we can start to resume our normal lives.
And the occasional cultural arbiter.
Regardless of the mixed quality of messages I experienced as I briefly sifted through on this creative website, there’s undoubtedly a warm sense of community somewhere inside this fragile, doomed place. Everyone is here to anonymously comment and establish a strange, temporary community together, and I think that’s a beautiful thing. Stay safe, everyone.
Write like you’d self-destruct
But FemmeAndroid’s website is more than a time capsule of COVID angst or a quirky homage to the Weird Web. If we can get a little philosophical here, This Website Will Self-Destruct is a conceptual statement on the ephemerality of online communication.
And, as a web writer, I really dig that.
Like Martin Gasser’s Color Dot font that turned anything we wrote into pretty colorful dots — and actually made us appreciate words more in their absence — this is another kind of wake-up call that I think hits closer to the bone.
Because if you think your best online writing is going to last forever, you’ve never seen an SEO culling team in action. It’s pretty brutal. Almost as brutal as the natural forces of link obsolescence. Never heard of it? Track down five of your favorite online pieces in five years’ time. See how many are left.
In the meantime, write like you’d self-destruct. Wake your clients up from their naps. Make your editors work for their money.
And head on over to TWWSD to enjoy a random message from a fellow human. Or leave one yourself.
Here’s mine:
Dear Website,
I hope we’ll get Better Call Saul season 5 on Netflix in Cyprus soon.
Thanks for listening,
Max
