Why the internet needs more weirdos with websites
When the Memory Hole Swallows Your Life
Sarah spent three hours last Tuesday looking for an article about her water utility raising rates 40%. She'd shared it on Facebook two weeks ago, even texted it to her neighbor. But Google couldn't find it, the local paper's site returned a 404, and Facebook's search was useless.
The city council meeting to vote on the rate hike was Wednesday morning. Without the article's data on how the utility had been overcharging for years, Sarah couldn't make her case. The rates passed unanimously.
This happens thousands of times every day. Important information just... vanishes. Not because it wasn't true, but because nobody built systems designed to remember.
The Real Problem (It's Not What You Think)
Everyone's complaining about "fake news" and "filter bubbles." But the bigger issue is institutional amnesia. We've replaced newspapers—which were boring but persistent—with platforms optimized to make you forget yesterday's outrage so you'll click tomorrow's.
Google buries articles that don't play by their opaque rules. Facebook's timeline shows you what keeps you scrolling, not what helps you make decisions. Twitter's search is deliberately broken. And actual newspapers are dying because they tried to compete with TikTok instead of doing what they're supposed to do: remember stuff and tell the truth.
The result? Every corporate scandal gets memory-holed within six months. Every broken political promise disappears down the timeline. Every pattern of abuse resets to zero.
This isn't an accident. Forgetting is the business model.
What Actually Works: The Oaklandside Story
In 2020, a few Oakland journalists got tired of watching local news die. They started The Oaklandside—not a blog, not a newsletter, but a proper media organization covering one city obsessively.
Three years later:
- City council members read their stuff before meetings
- Other outlets cite their investigations
- Their FOIAs get faster responses because officials know they'll follow up
- They've become infrastructure for anyone who needs to understand Oakland
They didn't go viral. They just showed up, documented everything, and refused to go away. Now they're indispensable.
That's the model. That's what you can build.
Your Four-Step Plan
Step 1: Pick Your Beat
Don't try to cover everything. Pick one specific type of bullshit that makes you genuinely angry:
- Companies that quietly change their terms of service
- Local government meetings where they think nobody's watching
- Apps that make canceling subscriptions impossible
- Tech companies that swap AI models and hope nobody notices
Your job: become the person who remembers everything about this one thing.
Step 2: Document Like You're Building a Legal Case
- Screenshot everything with timestamps
- Save web pages to Archive.org
- Keep a simple spreadsheet of dates, sources, and claims
- Write short posts connecting the dots
You're not trying to go viral. You're building a permanent record that gets more valuable over time.
Step 3: Make It Official
You don't need to become the Washington Post, but you do need to be more than a hobby:
- Register a domain ($15/year)
- Set up basic hosting ($10/month)
- Form an LLC for liability protection ($100)
- Write down your editorial standards
When someone with lawyers gets mad, you want to look like a real operation.
Step 4: Become Useful to Others
The goal isn't fame—it's becoming the source that journalists, lawyers, and researchers quietly rely on. When The Vergewrites about app store abuse, they should link to your timeline because it's the most complete one that exists.
Share sources with other watchdogs. Cross-reference investigations. Help fill in each other's gaps.
Why This Actually Works
After 18 months of consistent documentation, something interesting happens: you become infrastructure.
The Markup started as three reporters tracking tech company lies. Now their investigations get cited in Congressional hearings. 404 Media launched in 2023 focusing on tech industry accountability—now major outlets quote their scoops regularly.
The secret: they didn't try to compete with platforms. They built something platforms can't replicate—institutional memory.
"But I'm Not a Journalist"
Good. You don't need to be.
Journalism schools teach you to call both sides and write balanced articles. That's not what this is about. This is about being a librarian with an attitude—collecting, organizing, and preserving information that would otherwise disappear.
Can you take screenshots? Can you check if a company's claims today match what they said last year? Can you write three paragraphs explaining why that matters?
Congratulations. You have all the skills you need.
Start This Weekend: The 48-Hour Challenge
Here's your assignment:
- Pick one company that's annoyed you recently
- Spend two hours documenting one specific thing they've changed (privacy policy, pricing, features, whatever)
- Write 300 words about why it matters
- Publish it somewhere permanent (your own domain, Medium, even LinkedIn)
That's it. You've just created a piece of institutional memory that didn't exist before.
Do this every few weeks for a year, and you'll have something valuable: a record that shows patterns instead of isolated incidents.
Do it for three years, and you'll have something powerful: a reputation as the person who actually pays attention.
The Long Game
Big Tech's entire strategy depends on people having short memories. Your job is to make forgetting impossible.
You're not trying to get rich or famous. You're building something more valuable: a permanent record that forces accountability over years, not news cycles.
In five years, when today's scandals are supposed to be ancient history, your weird little website will still be there, serving up PDFs and keeping the receipts.
That's not just a media company. It's a public service.
Ready to start? Pick your target, document their next move, and publish it somewhere they can't delete it. The memory war is already happening—time to pick a side.
This is how you make Big Tech cry: by refusing to let their lies disappear.
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