Post Illusion Press: Writing for the Living Internet

Post Illusion Press was founded on a simple idea: the Internet used to be alive. It was strange, spontaneous, and gloriously inefficient—a place built by people who actually wanted to share something. Somewhere along the line, that changed. The algorithms came for us. Everything started to sound the same, look the same, and sell the same. Authenticity became a branding strategy. Creativity became “content.” The web got slick, fast, and hollow.

Post Illusion Press exists as a counter-gesture to that collapse. It’s not a business, a brand, or a funnel—it’s a signal flare. A quiet reminder that the Internet can still be human, curious, and handmade. This project lives at the intersection of experimental music, philosophy, psychology, and science fiction. It’s where the essays go that don’t fit anywhere else: reflections on art and absurdity, the philosophy of endurance, and the strange dignity of continuing to make things even when no one’s paying attention.

The name comes from the moment after disillusionment—after you realize how much of the modern world is built on illusion. What happens next? The “Post Illusion” mindset is about what remains when all the hype falls away. What’s left is the work: the act of thinking, creating, and caring deeply about something that may never trend.

The Mission: Write Like a Human Being

Post Illusion Press isn’t anti-technology. It’s anti-numbness. The goal isn’t to run backward toward nostalgia—it’s to reassert presence in an era of automation. That means writing by hand, metaphorically speaking. It means embracing imperfection, resisting optimization, and building communities of meaning instead of metrics.

Here, typos happen. Sentences ramble. The formatting might not be perfect. But everything you read is written by an actual person, thinking about something they actually care about. There are no ad placements, no affiliate links, no algorithm chasing. Just ideas, shaped and sharpened through attention and effort.

Post Illusion Press is also deeply interdisciplinary. One day it might be about Frank Zappa and existentialism. Another day it’s a study of the Dead Internet Theory or the philosophy of sports injury recovery. These aren’t contradictions—they’re coordinates. They trace a single theme: what it means to stay awake in a system designed to lull us into passivity.

The Web Ring: A Return to the Human Web

This is where the Post Illusion Press Web Ring comes in. Before social media and algorithms decided what everyone should see, small websites linked to each other freely. It wasn’t networking; it was neighboring. A Web Ring was a decentralized network of creators—each site connected to the next like a constellation of meaning.

The Web Ring revives that idea. It’s a living directory of independent thinkers, makers, and doers who still believe in human-scale Internet. Every member gets their own badge—a visual handshake that says, a person made this. When you click one badge, you step into another human space: no tracking, no data mining, no manipulation. Just people, ideas, and the quiet satisfaction of wandering through the genuine corners of the web again.

Our ring includes people like OCR Kings, who document obstacle course racing with honesty and grit, and Zack Henderson Training, who brings intelligence and humility to strength and movement. They represent what Post Illusion Press stands for: authenticity, craft, and personal sovereignty. These aren’t influencers. They’re practitioners.

Why It Matters

The Web Ring is not nostalgia—it’s infrastructure. The modern web runs on centralization: everything flowing toward a handful of platforms that profit from outrage, envy, and distraction. The Web Ring pushes back, one authentic site at a time.

It’s slow by design. You can’t doomscroll it. You move deliberately, link by link, visiting real websites that feel like homes, not billboards. It reminds us that the web doesn’t need to be optimized; it needs to be owned—by individuals who care about their work and their communities.

Each badge on a member’s site serves as both symbol and portal. It says, “We’re still here. We’re not for sale.” It’s rebellion through sincerity, craftsmanship, and connection.

The Philosophy of Resistance

In some sense, the Web Ring is the creative arm of the Dead Internet Resistance—another project within the Post Illusion ecosystem. The Dead Internet Theory suggests that much of today’s web is already synthetic: bots, automated engagement, and recycled content masquerading as life. Whether or not that’s entirely true, the metaphor holds. The algorithmic Internet is spiritually dead because it has forgotten its purpose: to connect humans through curiosity, creativity, and chaos.

Our response isn’t to rage or retreat. It’s to rebuild—slowly, stubbornly, and beautifully. Every essay, every badge, every imperfect hand-coded page is a small act of reclamation. The resistance isn’t violent or cynical. It’s the quiet insistence that meaning still matters.

How the Web Ring Supports the Mission

The Web Ring is the circulatory system of Post Illusion Press. It carries life between projects, people, and platforms. It ensures that the ideas we publish don’t get lost in the black hole of search rankings and social feeds.

Instead of optimizing for algorithms, we optimize for alignment. We connect with creators who share core values—craft over clout, honesty over polish, curiosity over clickbait. The Web Ring is a trust network built on aesthetics and ethos, not followers or metrics.

Each site in the ring reinforces the others. When someone finds Shank Gym, they can follow a badge to OCR Kings or Zack Henderson Training, discovering a shared spirit of effort and authenticity. The same happens in reverse. It’s a cycle of discovery driven by mutual respect instead of engagement farming.

In time, this network can grow—not through recruitment campaigns or social media blasts, but through recognition. When someone stumbles across one of our essays or videos and thinks, “These people get it,” they’ll know they’ve found one of us.

The Human Element

Ultimately, Post Illusion Press and its Web Ring are about re-centering the human voice in a machine-driven world. We write, record, and publish because that’s how we make sense of existence. We’re not trying to build a brand empire—we’re trying to preserve a sense of soul.

The Web Ring is the modern campfire: a circle of light in the digital night where independent thinkers gather, exchange warmth, and remind each other that not everything has been automated yet.

If you see one of our badges—on a gym, a blog, a music page, a philosophy essay—you’re seeing proof of life. Someone took the time to make something for its own sake. Someone cared enough to link back.

Closing Note

Post Illusion Press is not an antidote to the modern web—it’s an alternative rhythm within it. The Web Ring is how we stay connected, visible, and real. Together, they form a small, stubborn experiment in sincerity.

So if you find yourself here, reading this, you’re already part of it. Welcome to the living Internet.