This website started in 1996 as a cure for boredom. I really don’t remember if it had an About Me page or not. The web was the biggest thing to hit the world since the Walkman! Although I swore to never learn programming, the simplicity of the HTML language seemed to be a elusion of my stubbornness. After writing the first page and placing it on my ‘proaxis.com’ personal website space, I thought it would be the end. And then it all happened…
Before memes were spattered all over Facebook, we had gifs! And while people were fighting about how to pronounce that word, I slapped one on my site! With the continuing mission…to destroy all computers! Can you tell I was a Star Trek fan? Only of the Next Generation series of course. Shortly thereafter Microsoft Word software could save documents in HTML and just like that: websites became bloated with useless code.
The browser wars were in full effect and while I was always a Netscrape man myself, Internet Exploder finally won me over on their 5th version. All that changed when the ActiveX controls became weaponized. Luckily, we were all saved by the ashes of Netscrape when Mozilla introduced Firefox to the world! A new browser war had started and it all stemmed from Internet Exploder’s ability to live up to that exact namesake. Chrome introduced itself as the speed demon of browsers and it was game on! That was about the time that the internet started eating cookies.
I had taken a blissful vacation from the fast moving ways of the internet. Although I was enjoying the splendor of ignorance of website linguistics, eventually they reared their ugly heads again and bit me. The mistake of getting interested in databases had been made! This of course brought a HUGE change to my little website. I converted it from a handful of simple HTML tags to a full blown crazy database driven WordPress site. Talk about bloated code! I still to this day don’t know what half of it does. But after many a headache and hangover caused from this PHP stuff, I started to like it.
We’ve came a long way since the 10 or so lines of code that made my first webpage. Is it for the better? Who can tell. There is one little thing that I don’t quite remember: When did ‘About Me’ pages become a thing? At first, I thought it might have been WordPress’s fault, but I seem to remember them back in the early days too. I also want to know when people started taking them so seriously? I don’t believe I’ve ever read one that I liked. They’re so serious and boring for the most part. I’m fairly certain that the concept of the page originally stemmed from the fact that the web was born of nerds! I’m willing to put money on the fact that the phrase ‘I don’t know what to put on the site’ spawned this universal ‘About Me’ page as a placeholder for actual content.
Well, enough with the Jack London impersonations, I’m going to bed!
PS…If you don’t know who Jack London is, you really should read one of his books!