Down The Ladder

I’ve published my work on the Internet for many years now, but rarely have I tried to do so in any remotely formal way. That changed in late 2022, when I began diving into the wide world of the long-form content renaissance. Between the new wave of video essays, the rise of Substack and Medium, and the newfound prevalence of Patreon as a crowdfunding platform, there was a real opportunity to engage in the sort of long-form writing I always loved - this time in a professional capacity.

Enter: Down The Ladder (DTL) - an ongoing multimedia project that I’ve been writing, directing, and editing for since the summer of 2023. The blog covers a wide variety of topics - including art’s relationship to social change over time, the sublime beauty of early 90’s PC first-person shooters, and obscure, avant-garde Internet art projects - but while the areas that DTL examines vary wildly, the manner of examination stays the same: I’m primarily interested in bringing ideas “down the ladder” by actualizing the abstract, and grounding theory in practice.

Of course - there’s more than just the writing. In an effort to avoid vendor lock-in, I tried to build every piece of Down The Ladder from scratch when possible. The blog itself is a twig-and-leaves, low-JS static site made in the Astro framework, and the newsletter’s distribution and subscriptions are administered by a low-overhead Fastify server. Also built into Astro is an RSS feed that’s auto-generated from the raw Markdown of my blog posts, which many folks have informed me is the primary way they keep up with the site.

I’m immensely proud of what’s been accomplished with DTL so far, and it’s already had an astonishing amount of reach for what is essentially a one-man operation. I’m looking forward to expanding its size and scope with time, and I’m excited to be part of a growing movement of writers, artists, and developers building followings outside the narrow confines of traditional social media. I look forward to climbing down the ladder with you.