david wolfpaw • 19 Apr 2025 • Reading time: 5 minsI have been working with WordPress since 2008. That’s 17 years. And in that time I’ve done a lot of different things in and around the community and culture that formed.
Lately that community has fractured, and the culture around it has shown itself to be ruled by fear. Fear of being excluded, fear of being singled out, and fear of catching the Sauron gaze of the Benevolent (?) Dictator For Life and being punished for it.
I still like using WordPress. And I still make things with it for fun and for a living. I’ve made so many friends in that community that I interact with to this day. So I don’t want to abandon it entirely.
I’ve been thinking of what to do with the plugins and themes that I build for WordPress. I still recommend it as a tool for a lot of people, and I try to contain a lot of my online self on my own site. I’m still plodding away at my Digital Garden plugin to turn your website into a knowledge management tool. I still use it for my newsletters, although I may look into making something more simplified for my own use now that the already expensive tool that I use was sold to a new owner who will be looking for more profit.
I have no idea if it’s a good time to finally get into having a “WordPress plugin shop”. For a lot of reasons, it feels like the ship has sailed there, and I’d be putting resources into something that is in the midst of multiple revolutions. Maybe it should be yet another thing to go on the pile of, “projects that I want to distribute widely and free, and maybe folks will care enough to donate”.
By the way, I’ve kinda stopped introducing the link share below. Should I pretty that up or put some heading to it?
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Turns out, it’s only an issue if you’re raised to think that it is.
Maybe 4chan is actually gone? Who even knows at this point. It has shaped so much of the internet and culture in its 22 year history.
Not every game needs to be hardcore. I like chill vibes where I can focus on socialization over challenges.
I admittedly don’t remember my start on the web, separate of AOL a few years prior to 1995.
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You don’t even need Rainbow Road to take them out 🌈
I had no idea that the whole screaming goat thing was actually sheep
Masculinity isn’t toxic, but the way that culture treats masculinity is.
It does feel a lot harder to picture a content god over a morose one.
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Yet another interesting visual experience with the band built on them.
A rather old and popular creepypasta, but a fresh recording of it really brought me back. Stories about time travel and moving in and out of time always seem to get me.
A member of my mastodon instance (which turned 8 this week!) wrote and voiced this poem and I love it.
We should have listened sooner about this weird little creep and done something to stop him.
If you made it this far, why not share this newsletter with a friend? Or share with me some of the things that you found that you liked this week. Either way, I’m thrilled!