Look, I get it. The foundations of the internet are broken and we’ve somehow gotten to a place where having a website is either expensive, complicated, or perceived as unnecessary, whereas social media platforms are cheap and easy. But still, please, if you are a business or an individual artist or creator, have a fucking website. “But-” fuck you, have a fucking website.

I haven’t had a Facebook account in a decade. I have Instagram blocked for most of the day so I don’t waste time scrolling it. If you’re a hair salon, or a tattoo artist, or a restaurant, or whatever, please just have a fucking website where I can go and see your rates and hours. Not all of your potential clients are on these platforms, and I suspect that even many of the ones who are appreciate a simple, unadorned site that tells them what they need to know at a glance.

Not only that, but as we saw with Twitter a few years ago, platforms can change the rules overnight so that the following you’ve built up is suddenly worthless. Or they can decide to boot you for no reason and you’ll have no recourse. I get that IG is easy for sharing updates with people but it is so, so simple to just set up a website once with a menu/prices/whatever on it, then you can rest secure in the fact that you can be found on the internet regardless of the whims of our drug-addled tech overlords.

You don’t own shit that you put on social media platforms. You don’t own your follower counts, you don’t own your posts. Stop giving away all of your shit to data harvesters and advertisers for free in exchange for the illusion of importance that comes with likes and a follower count. Set up a website — and while you’re at it, start a mailing list, because email is basically the only means of reaching your contacts that can’t easily be taken away from you.

The internet was built on websites that linked to one another. The concept of congregating in walled gardens owned by pedophilic fascist speed freaks who actively block the sharing of links in an effort to keep people scrolling on their platforms is very new. With any luck, it will pass sooner rather than later, and every time someone creates an actual fucking website, that day gets a little closer.