A Goodbye to HTMLGiant

When you're really engrossed in something it can be hard to tell if everyone else is engrossed or if it's just you. Something about the forest for the trees. Because, what does the rest of the world matter when you've got this tiny, personal thing that covers your whole vision? And yes, I'm aware that's a pretty deep way to open what is more or less just a send off to an online blog; but I'm aware that despite the outpouring of what one might call a deeply appreciative, weird sort of love from all the scattered different alcoves of the web for HTMLGiant over the last few weeks, you, dear reader, may not even know what an HTMLGiant is.

If you never, in the early hours of some lonely morning, stumbled (clicked) your way to this particular dark side of the web, then at its simplest: HTMLGiant was a blog that ran from September 2008 until sometime last week, written under the guise of being an "alt-lit" blog, a "movement" (if that's what you'd call it) just starting up at the time, although really just a blog where a handful of contributors wrote book reviews, alt-lit and not, trash talked each other, posted funny images and pointless status updates when they were too bummed-out to write something proper, and had a place with a fairly big audience to write out all the usually thought-up-then-forgotten manic ideas that flooded up their craniums, where they might have otherwise just become background dressing on personal blogs no-one would ever read. And for that they deserve some thanks. 

I wouldn't know where to point someone wanting to "get into" the site. The archive's been there for reading for the three or so years I've followed the site but I simply chose to read the posts that came up on my blogger feed and nothing else. Which opens up the trail of thought about how a place like HTMLGiant will be remembered. Your grandad probably read an article in an obscure magazine in his twenties that he thought was the greatest thing he ever read, and it's very probable that that article is on some online archive now, preserved by some small-name publisher. Many times reading HTMLGiant I wondered if it was the greatest thing I'd ever read. Maybe it wasn't, who cares? Memories make everything look shiny and clear, surely the only really great writing to matter to you is the writing that you're thinking is really great right now? The archives will be shut off at some point, and then only the people who were there will have been there. Sad, since HTMLGiant is as good and as worth treading through as any 'movement" or grouped-together cast of writers that I've ever heard of.

Jimmy Chen was my favorite writer there - look through his archives if you're new. I once saw his writing described (in the comments of one of his posts) as every stoned conversation you ever had in college somehow connected together. He eventually got tagged around the site with the word "misogyny", a reputation the whole site straddled with, probably why the recent news of arrests of many high profile alt-lit figures over sexual charges, Tao Lin being the "big one" of alt-lit and covered on the site frequently, was what pushed the site over the edge and what made those running the site decide it was time to pack up.

I don't really feel I need to say more. Others have said multitudes more. Good wishes to all contributors. I hope the archives are up for a long time more. It was a weird little corner of the web that felt like it was doing something so original and doing it with the sort of confidence that made you feel like all the writers' different brands of crazy were so good they'd be the mainstream one day, once everyone caught on, a sign that it was a good enough place that it made you so engrossed you forgot, or maybe just stopped pretending it even fucking mattered, that it wasn't cool and you were the only one in your real life who had even heard of a place called HTMLGiant, but surely that was all part of the fun.