Back in the day, you could type "gallerymjb" into a google search bar, and up would pop dozens of my images, along with top search results to my pages at Flickr, Etsy, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc... If you typed my pseudonym "velveeta heartbreak" into a google search, likewise, dozens of my online profiles would appear.
But that was then, and this is now. I have deleted all my accounts. (ok, except Pinterest. I can't bring myself to delete the board with 8,000 pins of my favorite stuff that took me years to build). Anyways, I made a decision to not feature any of my music or artwork in places that have advertising or other extra stuff I can't negotiate, can't control and don't profit from. Most people would buy a dot com domain, build their own site, and be done with it.
I had my own dot com sites back in 2002. Back then, before the smartphones and the social media, you would build a site, and then you had to tell people about it. Nobody was going to find you, you had to herd them in. It seems like we are back to where we started. Unless you want to use commericial social media, in which case your profiles will always be at the top of the search results. If anybody is actually google searching you.
Since we're now in the era of archiving, and this blogspot has become the archive for all the audio and visual stuff I ever did, it would make sense to list here all the former websites I ever had. The first website I ever had was at ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/mjbowman, that would've been circa 1997. In the early 2000s I rented a server and started creating my own dot coms, I believe I had semperlofi.com and gallerymjb.com, and maybe a few others. Then around 2006 I discovered blogger and began creating blogspots, the main one was Magic Plastic Cassette Factory. Around 2013 I finally caved in and got onto Facebook, Instagram, Flickr, etc... as well as running a shop on Etsy and eBay. From then until now (2023) I tried just about every online shop, online art outlet and social media platform in existence. Like I said, I shut it all down. And in the process disappeared from google.
It doesn't really matter if you show up in google searches when you are the only person on the planet searching up your nom de plume. The effect of not showing up in the search is still unnerving. It's a bit like looking in the mirror and not seeing your reflection.
The google internet of today is all about location. And location is about shopping. The mobile-first index that google is now building is not about information, it's about shopping. Years after I'd stopped selling art on Etsy, my Etsy shop was still coming up first in the google search for "gallerymjb". An exhibit from years ago still shows up. Hey google, the art show ended FIVE YEARS AGO. Yet this blogspot, which is constantly updated, is nowhere to be found in google's search index. So much for google's claims of "relevancy".
Believe it or not, google used to be something of an intellectual and cultural hub, its existence was like an information renaissance. The current google is a cross between electronic yellow pages and a walmart catalog.
My decision to vacate places like Flickr, Etsy, Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Garageband, has disappeared me. Obscurity is the price I have paid to exile myself to this blogspot and to the Internet Archive. Invisibility. You may have heard my song "I Shot The Invisible Man"? I AM THE INVISIBLE MAN. And I've shot myself in the foot.
I received a notice from google in their google search console, telling me that this blog was not "mobile friendly", and that it could not be indexed in their mobile search results. IMHO, this blog looks way better on all platforms the way it is. Turn your mobile phone horizontally, and use your thumb and forefinger to zoom like you would for the Walmart, or Home Depot, or Amazon mobile website, and everything will be fine.
If you enjoy looking at artwork that is handmade, a bit psychedelic, modernist, brut and funky, then you've come to the right blog. This is the ONLY place where you will ever find the complete, annotated, online gallery of my artwork. If I ever make new work again, this is the place you'll see it. If you want the music as well, and all the documentation, go to my page at the Internet Archive.
The strategy now is to maintain an empty profile at each of the places that Google search favors. Signposts pointing to this blog. There is no content there for them to exploit for ad revenue, I get to have my graffiti sticker as it were on their building. I try not to get too mad at google, after all, this is their blogging platform, their search engine. It's a google world, and if you don't play by their rules, you disappear.
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