Why I had (and no longer have) an 'About Me' page
Long story short: it was entirely redundant and offered literally zero purpose
Long story long: see below
So I’ve always had immense trouble even writing an 'About Me' section anywhere online or in person (I’ve had to do it for classes when I was in school, mostly if the teacher was new or something). It’s difficult for me to properly acknowledge everything that makes me the person I am, and the person I am can’t be neatly placed onto a page on a website that people are going to, if I’m lucky, quickly skim over.
You hear it all the time in other people’s 'About Me' sections that they ‘don’t really know how to describe themselves’, yet seem to be pretty articulate in their descriptions of interests or pastimes, their schooling and their experience with coding and HTML. I’d begun to think the fact I can’t talk about myself is a me problem, but it’s not really that.
They’re just things that feels heavily adjacent to current social media climate, and not something you’d find on someone’s personal website. 'About Me' sections (at least to me) are things best found in the Carrd of some random teenager on Twitter, or on the pinned post of someone’s Tumblr right above (or below) their extensive DNI.
If you didn’t have the chance to read my 'About Me' while it was still up, trust me on this, you weren’t missing anything. Here’s the second paragraph verbatim:
‘I think ambiguity and anonymity on the internet are cool; I’ve never really felt like telling random people my story from birth until now in real life, and that sentiment carries over onto the internet. You’re not gonna get much information out of me on this page aptly titled ‘About Me’; instead I’ll try let my website tell you about myself with a clarity that I can’t produce here’.
I was self-aware enough to understand that the page was redundant, but not self-aware enough to not actually include it at all; the irony is not lost on me.
The proverbial third eye opened on this topic (thanks to reading this article/blog post) and now I’ve decided to chop the faulty limb off. Sorry to anyone who may have had an emotional attachment to it, it was just weighing everything down.
(I’ll probably keep a screenshot of the page as well as the code on my laptop just for archival purposes, but don’t hold your breath on it ever coming back)
I might come back to this topic at a later date because I do have more opinions, they just don’t really fit into this personal discussion