Just Had My ‘Network’ Moment, But I’m Better Now

I admit that I’m not a good web designer. I was never trained in it, so I flail about and experiment and try not to crash the site. This leads to frustration that’s unfair to others, but amuses me later.

I was trying out one of those sites that’ll host your blog. Never mind the name; like I said, I’m being unfair to them so I won’t say. I’m putting together a site for an upcoming series of books, so I wanted to get a head start on putting up a few pages, so I thought I’d give this site a try.

And it seemed like all they had to offer was hipster WordPress themes, which I don’t think is a thing but is what I called seeing all these fashionable photos on white backgrounds designed to appeal to beautiful aspirational youngsters who see themselves motorbiking through Italy, sitting in artisan coffee shops, or being young, blonde, and willowy. All of the art is HUGE as if your audience consists of nothing but grandmas with glaucoma, and because the latest thing in website design is to have panels of text floating over HUGE FUCKING PHOTOS of beautiful young people in upscale urban environments free of bums, garbage, and abandoned cars, every hipster WordPress theme of course had to have it.

The last straw broke when I typed in the site’s two-word name, and the theme BLEW IT UP TO 80-POINT ALL CAPS! Which pissed me off so much that I backspaced and slammed this title in instead:

Then I deleted the website and my account before the site owner kicked me off.

I know, it was childish, but I feel a lot better. And since I’m still laughing about it today, I’d thought I’d share it with you.

Owning your own company has its benefits sometimes.

(For those of you too young to remember “Network,” here’s where the post title came from.)