about bugcage

bugcage is the name of this personal site/project that i started on january 15, 2023.

its intended to be my home on the net for my art, thoughts, collections and various other things.

click the highlighted text below to learn more or go back.

but why was bugcage created?

i guess to explain exactly why it was created i should explain my history with the internet, web design and social media.

i had been interested in web design way back since my neopets days as a child.

in the early 2000s the option to customize your page was pretty common across most accounts.

it wasn't something limited to just personal websites.

myspace, neopets, livejournal and many others are examples of this!

as a pre-teen & teen i spent a lot of my time online learning html and css so i could customize all of my pages just how i wanted.

at some point i even started designing my own layouts for livejournal!

eventually, i got more interested in having my own personal site.

while they're all long gone, some of them hosted by free hosts that are now defunct, i had quite a handful at various points in my life.

i would eventually lose interest, be busy with school and/or just forget these personal sites most of the time though.

currently as an adult i have more free time and in 2020 i got tired of wasting that free time on social media.

for awhile my preferred places to post art was tumblr, blogspot or my facebook page.

around 2016 or 2017 i decided to try posting my artwork to instagram.

with my account starting to grow sometime in early 2020, i found myself feeling overwhelmed.

there were also algorithm and engagement changes made during this time i didn't agree with.

so in mid 2020, at the height of the pandemic and the chaotic state of the world, i just stopped.

being someone who made and posted content to social media felt like a performance and with everything going on in the world, i wanted to get off social media.

i didn't want to be public, i didn't want to keep my account "active" to stay relevant, i didn't want to perform anymore.

my facebook account with all of my family and some highschool friends was already long abandoned for years.

as for other sites like twitter which was only ever for personal use, it was more difficult for me to quit.

it wasn't until i realized how much the stuff i was seeing and reading on twitter was affecting my mood and outlook on life that i stopped.

in late 2021 i still had an itch to create things and share them online so i gave youtube a try.

while creating things in a video format is something i discovered i really enjoyed, youtube felt like instagram all over again.

so at the beginning of 2022 i silently took a hiatus from creating "content" on youtube for the time being.

then, sometime in june 2022 something compelled me to go searching for geocities (not realizing it had been defunct since 2009).

my search led me to neocities and i started my first project, cicada crossing!

although i've put it on the backburner for now, i'm still so happy and proud of what it is and what it means to me.

it represents a moment in my life where i rediscovered something i used to enjoy doing for many years.



and so i guess that's how i eventually ended up here, creating bugcage.



the last three years have been rough for me - 2022 being my breaking point and the catalyst for change i suppose.

i've been fighting to exist and to create for the last three years - i want 2023 to just be better even if just a little-teeny-tiny-bit more than the last three years.

so unlike my past attempts to run personal sites as a teenager, i want to maintain and update bugcage for as long as possible.

i want to be 80 years old and still updating my silly little website on the internet!!! (if its still possible)

everything i want to create for myself and for others will live here!

things will be posted or updated whenever! at my own pace! there is no algorithm to feed here!

creating things and sharing them with the world is a special thing but i'm ok doing it quietly here on my tiny corner of the internet.

thanks for reading and thank you for visiting bugcage!

- sam

but why the name "bugcage"?

honestly, i have no idea! there was no real reason, it just came to my mind and i liked it.

i respect all insects, i especially like cicadas and find them interesting since i've lived in rural ohio most of my life where they chirp all summer long.

i am absolutely terrified of them and most other insects, spiders, etc though!!

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