Blog / Ideas
January 24, 2026
Social media fatigue is real. Half my friends aren't even on Instagram anymore. Not because they stopped caring about each other—because they're sick of being trapped in attention machines.
The original promise was simple: see what your friends are up to. That's completely dead now. It's ads, influencers, and algorithmic recommendations designed to keep you scrolling.
It's also hard to commit to any platform right now. Substack vs X for articles. Threads vs Bluesky vs X. Everything feels unstable. People are spread thin across a dozen apps that might not exist in five years.
Personal websites solve this. One place you own. One URL that's yours forever. Your name is the only brand you can't get sick of—and masonearl.com isn't going to pivot to engagement farming.
With how easy it is to build a website now, I think more people will start maintaining personal sites—moments, blogs, portfolios. Owning their corner of the internet.
A simple tool that tracks updates from websites you care about. Your friends' blogs. Their photo logs. A feed of real people, no algorithm.
You design your own feed. Want photo updates from one friend and blog posts from another? Done. Filter by what matters to you. No recommendations. No ads. Just the people you chose to follow.
Bring back Instagram 2010 energy, but built on the open web.