Build Your Own

Kindness, compassion and community didn't go away. They've just been hiding. Let's revive them!

Hi! I'm Rebecca Bardess and I've been online since the start of the online world. When I first went online, the screen was green and black and only 2,000 computers were connected.

You can read about that here if you're interested in the history of the internet, blogosphere, social media, and indie publishing, and the part I played in all of those. But this page isn't about me, so let's talk about you now. 

Did you miss out on the moment when the internet was kind? 

I promise there was a moment where the internet was kind. It may be hard to believe, but this was just before twitter started to pull in its first big wave of users. Even though some people had accounts on the earliest social media platforms, that wasn't your hub. Your hub was your blog. Your online home. 

And when people came to your online home, they treated it like an actual home. 

Before the Blogosphere was a concept, those of us with websites had guest books on our sites where we, bizarrely, urged people to leave their 'footprints' to prove they were there. 

But when the Blogosphere really fired up, there was an understanding that our homepage was our literal home online. You behaved like a guest when you came to someone's blog, and you left uplifting comments. 

We guest blogged, and created awards and contests. We formed blog circles so that we could all find each other, because Google wasn't as important back then. You took recommendations on the homes to visit from the homes you'd visited. It was organic, built from the ground up, and basically as good as the internet ever got until now. 

Because we have better tools now, and you have a guide who has blogged, guest blogged and ghost blogged for decades. If I say the early Blogosphere is the cure to our current ills, that's soup you want to dive into before social media makes you any less well. 

This is a wellbeing revolution.

This is an authenticity revolution. 

This is a 'screw the ALGOholism' revolution. 

And it will also be a ton of fun, and a way to find peace in a world that's doing all it can to steal your joy. 

Come in, grab a cuppa, and let's blog!

First module unlocks on the 26th of February.