If your website looks like this people don’t need to read your content in order to tell that you’re a crazy person who is out of touch with how he comes off and doesn’t have basic competencies like “realize that this is terrible, hire a professional”. Just scroll through without reading any of it, and with your defense against the dark arts primed and ready, tell me how likely you feel that the content is some brilliant insight into the nature of time itself. It’s a real signal that credibly conveys information about how unlikely this person is to have something to say which is worth listening to. Signalling that you can’t make a pretty website when you can is dishonest, and the fact that you would be hindering yourself by doing so makes it no better.
When you know what you’re doing, there’s nothing “dark” about looking like it.
I’m not sure that sites like that look that way because they just don’t know any better. I think they may be signaling they’re not an ‘establishment’ site, and so *increase* their trustworthiness in the eyes of their target audience.
That’s an interesting hypothesis, and seems plausible as a partial explanation to me. I don’t buy it as a full explanation for a couple reasons. One is that it is inherently harder to read and follow rather than being an equally valid aesthetic. It may also function as a signal that you are on team Incoherent Thought, and there may occasionally be reasons to fake a disability, but generally genuine shortcomings don’t become attractive things to signal. Even the king of losers is a loser, and generally the impression that I get is that these people did wish they had more mainstream acceptance and would take it in a heartbeat if they could get it at the level that they feel like they deserve. That doesn’t mean that they won’t flout it when they can, but the signs are there. They spend a lot more time talking about “the establishment” than the establishment spends talking about them, for example.
The main point holds though. If your target audience sees formal attire as a sign of “conformism and closed mindedness” rather than a sign that you are able to shave and afford pricey clothing, then the honest thing to do is to show that you don’t have to conform by not wearing a suit when you meet with them. When you’re meeting the people who do want to make sure you can shave and put on fancy clothes, it’s honest to show that you can do that too.
If your website looks like this people don’t need to read your content in order to tell that you’re a crazy person who is out of touch with how he comes off and doesn’t have basic competencies like “realize that this is terrible, hire a professional”. Just scroll through without reading any of it, and with your defense against the dark arts primed and ready, tell me how likely you feel that the content is some brilliant insight into the nature of time itself. It’s a real signal that credibly conveys information about how unlikely this person is to have something to say which is worth listening to. Signalling that you can’t make a pretty website when you can is dishonest, and the fact that you would be hindering yourself by doing so makes it no better.
When you know what you’re doing, there’s nothing “dark” about looking like it.
I’m not sure that sites like that look that way because they just don’t know any better. I think they may be signaling they’re not an ‘establishment’ site, and so *increase* their trustworthiness in the eyes of their target audience.
That’s an interesting hypothesis, and seems plausible as a partial explanation to me. I don’t buy it as a full explanation for a couple reasons. One is that it is inherently harder to read and follow rather than being an equally valid aesthetic. It may also function as a signal that you are on team Incoherent Thought, and there may occasionally be reasons to fake a disability, but generally genuine shortcomings don’t become attractive things to signal. Even the king of losers is a loser, and generally the impression that I get is that these people did wish they had more mainstream acceptance and would take it in a heartbeat if they could get it at the level that they feel like they deserve. That doesn’t mean that they won’t flout it when they can, but the signs are there. They spend a lot more time talking about “the establishment” than the establishment spends talking about them, for example.
The main point holds though. If your target audience sees formal attire as a sign of “conformism and closed mindedness” rather than a sign that you are able to shave and afford pricey clothing, then the honest thing to do is to show that you don’t have to conform by not wearing a suit when you meet with them. When you’re meeting the people who do want to make sure you can shave and put on fancy clothes, it’s honest to show that you can do that too.