Don't give me a sense of time

Who cares when it was written?

Not long time ago (yesterday? two days ago? can't remember) I read interesting text from Bikobatanari.art web page called My Website is a Personal Museum. The post is totally worth reading so go check it out. Anyway it made me think about my own web page structure in Texts page. Does it really make any sense to sort my texts in chronological order, no matter what is the topic of the text? Is there any kind of benefit of having that kind of "feed" of texts? Probably anything I have written here does not have any kind of expiry date and it does not make any difference if you read those in 2023, 2040 or 2050 even. So what is the point of having dates added there on list page and therefore creating some kind of illusion of relevancy in current time and space?

If somebody finds his or hers way here to my personal web page and they will find that here is some kind of Texts-section and they see that it is last updated three years ago, it probably can affect their motivation to read those articles. At least I personally have noticed that if I find a blog what was last time updated 8 years ago it is too easy to skip reading unless I am already hooked because of interesting post. When I can see dates easily on a list and I can see that there has not been any updates in years it feels that I would be wasting time reading older posts either. If I find those enjoyable it feels somehow sad that there is no probably coming any more new posts on that page and therefore it is just easier to skip the reading in the first place. Yes, I know that it makes no sense in so many levels, but it is what it is.

When I read a novel I don't most of the time know when it is written and most of the time I don't care. Good story is a good story, no matter when it was written. 1996? Still relevant. 2019? Yep, same here. No matter even if that was written 1725. Many of my posts have some kind of relevancy tied to time when it was written tho. I mean, if I criticize the "modern web" then of course there is a difference if you read that in 2000, 2020 or 2023, but on those kind of texts time range when the text is somehow relevant to reader is still very broad. Thing what I would call modern web in 2023 has been this way at least five year so it does not matter that much if you read it on 2018 or 2023.

Dates on texts gives some kind of illusion of relevancy for the reader. Of course that is not true for every reader out there, but at least I can easily feel it that way. On texts what are not tied somehow to current time (like current news are) it is probably better that there is no date shown when it was written. Who cares if the topic is interesting? Does it matter if I have written this 2023 or if this was written 2007? Of course if you don't find this text interesting in the first place you have probably already went away before you have seen these sentences.

FOMO as the cool kids said... back in the days at least

Endless stream of continuity makes a feeling that there is something interesting all the time happening at least somewhere. Some things are hot topics on that time but couple of month later those are already forgotten. If you do not follow actively streams of information you are missing all the things what is happening around you. Do you want to miss out? Sadly quite often the answer seems to be no even it could be much better if that would be yes.

Think about that couple of seconds or even longer if you are not in hurry. I assume you are not in hurry since you have reached that point on this text what is already quite long so you have some time to use and you have enough patience to spend reading longer texts what is a good thing.

If you thought about that - what would you really miss? Does it really matter to you and does it make your life any better if you know that there has been huge socially meaningful conversations, heated debates and events what in the end didn't change nothing? Think about #METOO. Have you heard about it in recent months, weeks or even years? What happened? There was lot of rage and lynching mentality in general public, people got fired and then it just disappeared. Boom. Nothing actually happened, society didn't grew for better and most of the times it felt to be mostly just another kind of possibility for hypocrite virtue signaling where feelings gets over the rational thinking and judgements were given before there was even proofs that something has really happened. Is this really the society we really need and want? And in the end for this context of this post, did it really made any difference for your life if you were surfing in the information when the topic was hot or if you skipped that bus and lived your own living instead?

Another one is Black Lives Matter. Lots of huge rage, shootings, burning and "Fiery but mostly peaceful protests" what made people maybe even rightfully call BLM to Burn, Loot & Murder instead of "Black Lives Matter". It is just an another example how some topic are in the news some time and people talk about, how they have strong opinions for direction or another and then boom, it just randomly disappears as fast as a donuts from the coffee table on Police Station, at least on police TV series. Did any conversations or heated debates made your life any better when those topics were relevant in that time?

If you didn't follow those and many other topics actively you easily missed all the new turns of events. What a huge waster opportunity for panic, fear, rage and virtue signaling in a social media it must have been!

Now think about the case that you want to actually understand what all those events were all about. If you will search for the deeper analyzation of those events does it matter if that was written in 2021 or 2022? Do you care if that was written in February of December if you are not searching for the news? Also if you really want deeper and more thoughtful analysis of almost any of social event then it is better to read those much later when it is not relevant in society any more and there is no happenings going on. In that sense time and date in the article have its time and place but there is still no need to put it in the feed format where this kind of deeper analysis have same level of importance than the articles about how to brush your teeth correctly or whatever would be the next posts coming that feed anyway.

Goodbye to feeling of relevancy

Because of all of this I decided to renew my Texts-page. Previously there was dates listed before the text so you could easily see when the text was written. Now I have removed the days on that list and splitted all my texts in some kind of categories. Categories are not written in the stone either so I might change, add and remove those later to whtaever I feel adequate.

In the end of the text I probably will still keep adding dates and when the text was last updated. It gives perspective for reader and for me what I have thought on that time in my life, but when those texts are not listed on chronological order in listings there is no same kind of feeling of timeline feed, continuity and therefore not FOMO neither a pressure to write more content so that there is no too long time gaps between texts.

Also in my movie reviews I will also add date when I have written that since it gives me perspective about that writing. For example if I would have written a movie review on 2020 and after that I have seen over 500 other movies then of course that probably would affect how I would see that movie if I would see it now when there has been 500 other movies seen between those watches. The more I watch movies, the more I get different perspectives about cinematography, story telling, what works and what not etc. Therefore it is interesting to see when I have written that review so I could get some perspective how I have seen different kind of movies on different years.

Also on a diary page of my movies watching history there is and there should be dates when I have seen that movie. It is by nature that kind of information where dates matter. Dates on those lists does not change the movie but at least it gives me historical information when I have seen that. Dates and sorted by date kind of lists are not bad per se, but instead it is a good thing to have if that is any kind of meaning on it.

2023-03-09