Can a website be "useless"?

[Melooon]

But we are humans, to us things do have use and value, regardless of whether you want that or not. You

Yae but Nae! First you believe in the world, then you learn that everything is nothing, then you learn that's not very helpful, but then you learn that it is, whats next again Im not sure!

Of course we are people and we must live within the bounds of what humans require and need to exist; but we are also more than that, we have the limited (and possibly unique) ability to see beyond our own mortality and the reality we fain to perceive.

Or in other words; it isn't useful to say that a river technically

Is that not the question raised in this thread? Use? Why does it need to be useful if we define a river or not? Are you not commodifying perception by doing that? You've turned the idea of a river into a transmittable concept/product that you can give to other humans.

It's an endless loop; where everything that matters to humans is a product and therefor humans are the center of everything. Air is a product of the trees? Nae! The trees know nothing of air. Is pork a product of pigs? No, the pigs do not exist for us.

Everything is just matter and energy (and that info is not generally useful) so everything is conceptually useless; yet it's not. It's a paradox, and embodying that paradox is the use of useless things;

a bit bleak of an interpretation

you have to step into the bleakness of the unknown in order to truly more forward, otherwise your stuck!

So coding a website is arranging particles, like everything else is. Which means that a website can be anything or everything else. Which is why we make websites that can be anything, and use does not matter

[Memory]

I don't think that makes much sense at all.

[DJoftheCoven]

While it's quite jauntily worded, I'd say that Melooon makes a very compelling argument. Why view all aspects of life as commodities? Sure, things are commodified under capitalism, but I feel like the example you used of a haircut being a product consumed at production is the bleak outlook, rather than the idea of inherent nonsense in the universe. In a post-corporate/hyper-productive world, a haircut given to someone would be an act of kindness--a need fulfilled for the purpose of making each other well. Thinking of it (solely) as a commodity erases that aspect of what a post-capitalist world even stands for.

If you apply that same idea to websites, then you come to realize that whether or not they have a purpose is ultimately meaningless. I don't know about you, but I learned to and continue to code for similar reasons why I used to construct sandcastles as a kid. Does a beautiful sandcastle have any inherent purpose? Does it need to? I may just be a stack of cells given consciousness through energy and matter, but that does not preclude me from partaking in a little senseless creation of my own. Making sandcastles just to sell shovels and water pales sounds a lot stupider than building a sandcastle for the sake of artistic merit and recognition. On the other hand, building a sandcastle for artistic merit and recognition is a lot more soulless than making art because you're having a fun day at the beach.

It kind of reminds me of this comic:

[Memory]

While it's quite jauntily worded, I'd say that Melooon makes a very compelling argument. Why view all aspects of life as commodities? Sure, things are commodified under capitalism, but I feel like the example you used of a haircut being a product consumed at production is the bleak outlook, rather than the idea of inherent nonsense in the universe. In a post-corporate/hyper-productive world, a haircut given to someone would be an act of kindness--a need fulfilled for the purpose of making each other well. Thinking of it (solely) as a commodity erases that aspect of what a post-capitalist world even stands for.

By all means, have you read the rest? That's exactly what it says. The essence of a capitalist economy is that these things are commodified. That is an unfortunate but observable fact, since you can go out and buy a haircut as a commodity. But we as socialists are opposed to that, for a world in which these things are no longer commodities, and commodity production no longer exists.

Slavery, for example, forcibly turned humans into commodities. People abolished slavery, and therefore humans are no longer traded as commodities.

You are right, nothing is inherently a commodity — but in this current economic system they are. Which is bad. It alienates us from the product of our labor, or in other words, makes websites and haircuts impersonal. That's half of the entire point of Marx.

All I did was state an observation about the state of the world — commodities exist — not state that this is good. Socialism negates capitalism and will therefore liberate these things from the status of a commodity.

[Memory]

That's why I see parts of the retro web revival as part of a socialist counterculture, opposed to participating in commodity production. It can create class consciousness.

We seek to liberate both the web and us as users from being commodities, and we are all in agreement here, I think, that a website should not be a commodity, and neither should our data.

In what we do here, we are not engaging in commodity production, since none of it is produced for an exchange value. This entire thread is meant to dunk on the person who made the 'usefulness' comment, and I meant to expose that they did not actually mean use value (because practically everything has a use to someone, "consuming" a personal website can satisfy a social need or a need for viewing art and engaging in a community, for example), but exchange value or perhaps even capital.

I think we are all technically in agreemwnt but not on the same page currently.

[Melooon]

So I MAY have been watching a movie where everyone was talking in 17th century language and that MAY have effected my brain when writing that last post

BUT my general point was this; Marx's theory of production is primarily rooted in the Biblical idea that God created the earth for man; and its therefor mankind's holy right and duty to utilize the world. Marx removed the God aspect, but replaced it with "The People", so it was the peoples right and duty to utilize the earth for their own benefit.

I believe that both ideas are wrong; I don't think that humans are the central narrative of our existence. We are one component of a wider existence, we are no more important than rocks or atoms. The idea of production is incompatible with that belief because it's an idea that is rooted in human activity being the central narrative of our existence.

My claim is that you need things that are obviously useless to prove that everything is in fact ultimately useless; like a canary in the coal mine of perspective.

Once you accept that concept you are freed look at the world in new ways; you open the door to possibilities that could not have existed in your pervious mental structure.

My argument is that the mental structures that contain the ideas of production, use, utility, socialism and capitalism; are all obsolete. Not because those things are not needed in our lives, but because we need to be able to see beyond them.

There are many good arguments for why we need to get beyond that phase of thinking (Climate change, global resource supplies, economic/social equality, etc etc) but I think ultimately we need to do it because humans must go forward, we must change, if we don't we stop being human.

(This was actually also the subject of my article in the recent Yesterweb Zine!)

I don't think this is some vast philosophy that I have invented or follow, I think it's something thats in many peoples minds, even if they cant put it into words; I think its a collective noise thats coming from the zeitgeist, websites are one expression of that feeling and thats why they are fun, because its fun to move forward!

++

Oopph, that was exhausting to write But can I just add that I find this discussion really inspiring, its helping me put my ideas in words; so I hope you don't feel like Im against you (anyone but particularly /home/user), Im not I promise!

[Memory]

I mean, that just proves the incredible power of capitalism to alienate oneself from one's very own being as a human to the point of resenting oneself. Destructive for-profit production has tainted the entire idea of human existence as something disruptive, unnatural and immoral.

In contrast to that, we struggle not for defeatism and giving up human existence in favor of a spiritual idealist etherity rooted in grand theoretical ideals of nonphysical acorporeality, but for a world with better conditions where we can be free to be humans without slaving away for profit and someone else's productive goals.

And Marx' idea is really not rooted in Christianity in any way. It's not a theory either, the fact that we produce things is all around us. I mean, you cook — that's production. If you want to give up production, then stop making websites, making yourself food, raising potential children, or even having a digestive system.

How do you want to exist without ever participating in anything productive or using the environment? Do you advocate for eradicating the human race? We can produce in unison with nature, beyond capitalism, but we cannot cease to produce. You propose a world where we ignore all factual things in favor of some ethereal existence beyond... the concept of objects and relations between them. We will literally die without production and utility. All we do is production and reproduction.

I posit these terms are not useless because we currently, literally, physically, obviously live in this world. Capitalism exists, and socialism is its negation, and there is no world without an economic system. Classes tangibly exist. Ceasing to describe the world and how it works is not liberating, it's numbing and nauseating.

There is no existence beyond the tangible, material world. There is nothing useless because even your idea gives you comfort, which is your use value.
You abstract the world into nothingness, but that is a useless and impotent description.

Why would I settle for a world in which nothing matters and existence is wrong? Nobody who has suffered from material needs accepts the idea that you should give up the struggle in favor of nothingness and meaninglessness. Try telling a starving child that food is of no use to them and that they should simply open their mind to be free.

[Melooon]

There is no existence beyond the tangible, material world.

Thats simply not true, the future and the past are not tangible, but they exist.

How do you want to exist without ever participating in anything productive or using the environment?

Im not making a binary statment, Im making a paradoxical statment! Nothing matters and everything matters. Economics are obsolete and we need them. Humans don't matter and we do. You're clinging to this idea that things have to be one or the other but Im saying they are both.

Why would I settle for a world in which nothing matters and existence is wrong?

Why would you assume that existence is right or wrong? It's neither, it simply is. Nothing matters, you came from nothing and you'll go to nothing; yet everything matters, the stars could not exist if you were not here (because you are part of this universe and without you this universe would not be this universe). Nothing matters and everything matters, in a loop forever. That doesn't mean you should not enjoy your lunch, it just means that like you, your lunch is everything and nothing.

Philosophy is not an abstract menace that attacks the realities of life, it is an expansion of life, a duality that adds more beyond our literal bounds.

[Memory]

There is no existence beyond the tangible, material world.

Thats simply not true, the future and the past are not tangible, but they exist.

They are tangible, just not observable from this point in time.
Just because I cannot reach the inside of a rock it doesn't mean it's not tangible.
The philosophical dichotomy is the material world and the ideal world, as in, the realm of concepts, deities, ideas and consciousness. Marxists accept the existence of both but stress that it is the material world that shapes ideas and concepts, not the other way 'round.

How do you want to exist without ever participating in anything productive or using the environment?

Im not making a binary statment, Im making a paradoxical statment! Nothing matters and everything matters. Economics are obsolete and we need them. Humans don't matter and we do. You're clinging to this idea that things have to be one or the other but Im saying they are both.

If you accept that your statements are paradoxical then I can discard them because I don't believe things that I know are false. I don't know why you would.

Why would I settle for a world in which nothing matters and existence is wrong?

Why would you assume that existence is right or wrong? It's neither, it simply is. Nothing matters, you came from nothing and you'll go to nothing; yet everything matters, the stars could not exist if you were not here (because you are part of this universe and without you this universe would not be this universe). Nothing matters and everything matters, in a loop forever. That doesn't mean you should not enjoy your lunch, it just means that like you, your lunch is everything and nothing.

You posited that existing while using the world is wrong and rooted in irrational, biblical ideas, while at the same time denying that good and bad even exist. You seem to thrive in contradiction and paradoxisms and gleefully deconstructing what we can observe and conclude, in favor of nihilism, where nothing matters and we shall all die meaninglessly.

Philosophy is not an abstract menace that attacks the realities of life, it is an expansion of life, a duality that adds more beyond our literal bounds.

That is why the philosophy I embrace is dialectical materialism. We also have a duality, but it is the functional description of the workings of the world and can lead us somewhere instead of giving up, proclaiming nihilism and denying that facts and falsehoods exist.

I think we simply won't find common ground here because it seems to be part of your immutable world view that things can be themselves and their opposites at the same time, that you embrace believing in nothing and everything, that logic (as in formal logic, logic of expressions) itself is irrelevant and close minded.
It is far removed from my lived reality since I have too many very material things to worry about: a paycheck, global suffering, war, my stomach and mental health, too many tangible needs to just sit in an ivory tower and contemplate whether useful and useless are things that exist or can be one and the same. Thoughts that only privileged people can embrace who can afford to dissociate from the material — those who have no unmet material needs hence no reminder of the material world or a need to act within it. Again, opening your mind is well and good in a first world country with a cushy existence, but is a cynical thing to say in the face of a starving child in the middle of a warzone — tell them that use value does not exist when it comes to a crumb of bread or clean water, or that they can find happiness by changing their mindset, or that they actually matter not a single bit and their pained death will be just as meaningless as struggling against it. It is a philosophy that cannot prevail through history, since crises and revolutions will remind people of the very real material needs and relations that exist when they are faced with their grimness. And when capitalism and therefore the class struggle and therefore the basis for such dissociation from oneself and one's existence as a human are eradicated, that philosophy shall vanish in the annals of class era history.

Alas, I think arguing can do us no good, since our world views differ fundamentally and therefore our arguments will be meaningless to the other, because the premises and presuppositions are different.

I can recommend this basic work by the American Marxist Novack about existentialism vs. Marxism, which miɡht serve well if you are interested in further exploration of the ideaː
https://www.marxists.org/archive/novack/works/history/ch12.htm

We are on the same page when it comes to the indie web, and I think that is a good basis to leave the debate be. c:

[Melooon]

You posited that existing while using the world is wrong

Nope, I said it I said it was wrong to assume its right

Thoughts that only privileged people can embrace who can afford

You make an awful lot of assumptions about me here; I can only really answer them by making one observation; you're young (21?), when you're young you cling to realities because life is so much to bear, but time changes a person and you'll get stronger.

Meaning is far more complicated than you make it out to be, and logic far more limited; compassion is often paradoxical but that does not mean it can be discarded.

I suppose there's the old adage "The test of intelligence is to hold two apposing views in your mind and not go insane", I haven't decided if Im insane yet, but then again if I said I wasn't maybe that would be proof I was; I guess in my philosophy it doesn't matter either way, or does it? What do you think? :omg:k:

[Memory]

I suppose the multi century tradition of dialectical materialism is simply a young people thing then, and as you go older you will stop accepting material reality and tangible lived experience in favor of existentialist mind games, because... emotions mature. Ooookay. Whatever. I had weirder thought processes on acid, so who am I to judge.

[DJoftheCoven]

/home/user/, I don't want to come across as rude, but I feel like you might be missing the point here with all this talk of structure and theory. I don't disagree with the principles of marxism that you bring up--they are, in fact, solid ways of analyzing the current state of affairs. However, I feel like this obsession with theory might be restricting you from seeing that, at its core, the discussion that we're participating in here isn't supposed to be about marxism. It's about the place of useless websites on the internet.

What (I think) Melooon is saying is that, because nothing inherently has importance unless it is given importance, the idea of having utility at all is kind of ludicrous. This is a mostly theoretical way of looking at things, but it does propose an interesting line of thought: why does usefulness matter? If nothing matters, then why not have fun?

When I created this topic, I was feeling very upset that someone might consider the hard work I put into my website to be pointless and harmful. I discovered by reading through everyone's responses here that it didn't matter that some random guy would think my site shouldn't exist. It neither should or shouldn't, it just does. And because it makes me happy, I can decide that it matters.

Basically, if you want to discuss the political theory behind web revival, then we can talk about it, but I think you're taking this discussion in a direction that didn't really have much to do with the subject matter. Why don't we make a new topic for it?

[Memory]

I admit it derailed somewhat. My point was simply to try my luck at explaining where that sentiment from the original poster might have come from — disdain for creativity without exchange value. At the time I posted it, I felt like we were all in agreement anyway that the take was dumb, and I didn't intend on making it a big argument either, just a single addition, before Melon responded to it and it kinda grew from there.

I intended it to be a quick excursion, not a takeover of the thread; and it's not like I forced the topic to come back to economics and philosophy myself, various people participated in that argument.

I am more than happy to end the tangent from my end, and resume on the actual subject.

[Melooon]

When I created this topic, I was feeling very upset that someone might consider the hard work ... Why don't we make a new topic for it?

Im sorry DJ! You're totally right, I should be a better admin and not get carried away I give you your thread back (Only slightly dented)

[Absentmind]

Im sorry but hasn't the internet always had pointless content? A while back I was surfing old geocity archives and a lot of their stuff is indeed pointless! A lot of website just simply being "hello my name is jeff and this is my website, heres a picture of my dog!" I've always found the beauty of yesterweb design to be a place where you can be as absolutely mundane as you like just because you can! its part of the culture surely? the opposite of the no customisation, endless scrolling bloat, jump through hoops to get noticed you see everywhere today.

I get their frustration on having their content stolen but when learning HTML/css I often steal code to inspect it and rework it, is that right to do? no probably not. But its helping me learn a lot, they said they're trying to inspire and teach so isn't that part of the process? In my design class at unversity you are encouraged to steal and rework something to make it your own.

I think you have to accept there will always be people who steal and go against the grain/not understand why something is created, thats just the natural flow I feel.