q/a

Why don’t you have LinkedIn?

Interestingly, I created my LinkedIn around 2012, just a couple of years into high school—well before it became mainstream. However, I find that it promotes a culture of constant self-presentation, one that feels inauthentic, and something you feel pressured to engage with. This, in turn, only makes me less willing to so; even knowing that it puts me at a severe disadvantage compared to others.

It’s also about privacy, which to me, is a fundamental principle—one increasingly under threat in an age of rampant data exploitation. Sharing personal and professional information online not only seems careless but also feeds into systems designed to profile individuals (reverse face search engines, people search engines, etc.), track behaviors to refine algorithms for engagement and advertising, and drive invasive technologies.

Furthermore, I prefer to have control over who sees my career and achievements. It’s not about being secretive, but about exercising discretion and autonomy over my own narrative.

The constant drive for visibility and external validation, amongst many other issues, feels counterproductive and misaligned with my principles.

Did you make this website?

Yes, this website was built using Hugo as the foundational framework; the CSS and styling mostly done from scratch [later iterations reference tufte-css].

The goal was to create a minimalistic aesthetic by avoiding the unnecessary elements that clutter many modern websites—things like excessive JavaScript or an overemphasis on ‘responsive design’.

For guidance on specific configurations of Hugo, I have referred to the Hugo Bear Blog Theme.