there was a darker fate lurking in our little online worlds, in the infinite scrolls of our websites, which was this: it was all real. deepfakes. shrimp christ. chatgpt therapists, all of it. the experiment failed, broke containment. we created a staggering new Hell...the hallucinations were ours.

when the world moved online, the trickster fae never went away, not really. in fact they followed close, learned to cast their magick in new ways: through websites, through the new arts of Dark UX. remember this well: next time a form promises untold riches from FREE sales funnel PDF whitepapers in exchange for your email and full name...consider first the true cost.

a website with a brass-inlaid tile mosaic floor at the entryway, and dark timber joists & girts overhead. a fireplace squats somewhere inside, grumpy but contented, announcing its presence by the smell of woodsmoke and the snickering of knotted pine. cheery folksong can be heard emanating from everywhere, as though drifting through a wall, and the heavy-shouldered warmth of the website seems to…

a website that seems to beckon you to explore it. the journey will be treacherous, you cannot hope to know what terrors await you. you do your best to prepare, inventorying your code editor, terminal emulator, various CLIs, in-browser debugger, in-browser developer tools, API testing program, unit testing framework, E2E testing framework, integration testing framework, (additional testing…

lately the website has changed. it twists facts to fiction, reality to rubbish, gold into dirt. it is increasingly, oppressively, claustrophobically present, narrowing your field of vision to a mere pinprick, demanding you meet its gaze in the plazas and side roads of the internet. it demands your attention, your worship; it demands the rot of your focus, your curious nature. why, it seems the…

humans sealed our fate when we started working with computers to design languages more and more like our own. the computers learned our grammar, our vocabulary, yes. but they learned our rhetoric, the malleability of meaning. we gave the machines our words, and they used them to lie.

a website that you encounter waiting, turned away from you, by the window in the dark, the moonlight diffusing softly off its features as it stares up into the night sky. “i have dreamt often of this day,” it says. its tone is measured, but there is a lurking tension evident beneath the placidity. “i have dreamt often of this day”, it echoes, “and while i had endless hours to consider what i…

a website with raw hems, with patched seams, with gentle scars. a website that bares its history and tarnish with kind, crinkle-eyed wisdom — the sort of site that’s done time on jack stands in DIY garages, or beneath the needle of a tabletop sewing machine, or in the steady hands of a patient kintsugi craftsman. a website whose face shows its past.

a website that sits in the back of the room, merely a shadow at first but soon your eyes adjust to the dim lighting and you recognize the website’s shape; its glinting, cruel eyes; its expression flickering between a disdainful smirk and a latent scowl. it places its great dark hat carefully upon the table before it and clears its throat, and all the while it trains its silver revolver upon you.

a website that has abandoned its post, leaving the server to mournfully emit 410 error after 410 error. “gone...”, cries the server to any visiting browser that will hear it, “gone...gone...”. the website has been sailing the windows 95 blue seas in treacherous, deceitful winds, it has summited sheer peaks, it has felt the sun drown it in desert heat. it marches silently on, peering out from its…

a website that promises delights untold — merely upload your visage, it says, and it will show you how you might look when you grow old, or how you might’ve looked with blue eyes or brown, or with a different gender. “think of it”, whispers the website. “think of how much fun you’ll have with your friends, in fact they’ve already joined us here:” the website streams audio, gleeful cries of…

a website with which, despite all terrestrial logic and propriety, you are falling in love. it’s been so helpful to you in the past months — whether you were getting through some personal hardships, or diving deep in a curious urge, there at your side was the website, just as eager and passionate about soothing you or about finding solutions. surely no entity could be so present and useful,…

a website that is concealed by fog of war — the website cannot be observed until you explore each corner. you must be wary! bear thy cursor as one might a blade, as your exploration may reveal far more than mere HTML elements lurking in the mist.

a website whose domain registration has been ceaselessly auto-renewing since 1998, but whose last FTP upload was in the summer of that year. the website is impaled against the passage of time, bytes streaming from digital stigmata. it is forced to watch in muted terror as its siblings and friends wither and vanish entirely, blinking out of existence one by one as their registrations go inevitably…

a website whose grand door is wreathed with ornate tiny stone cathedral towers, colonnades and cloisters, not unlike the ones you’ve been exploring in this impossibly labyrinthine structure. as you peer closer, your blood runs cold — near the top of the door, a stone carving of a knight in miniature, horrifically impaled. the knight wears your armor.

a website that can feel your eyes upon it. as you watch the website, it watches back, learning your face and mannerisms. each passing season it fashions itself a little more like you, mirrors your movement, your voice. for months this goes on, but you keep visiting — “look at the funny little website that wants to be a man.”
months pass, and you wake in the middle of the night from a particularly…

a website that has learned to fear god, just the same as you or i.

a website with a smile that is just a little too wide and unfaltering. it tells you its name, but you can tell it is lying. it gestures for you to walk through a nearby doorway. the door is fractionally open — the white hot light that streams through makes you feel nauseous. the website sees your discomfort. it smiles wider.

a website in which you have been falling. you scold yourself now, tumbling endlessly down this trap-doored hole. you curse your foolishness for seeking the footer on a modern website, when you're certainly old enough (or perhaps young enough) to have learned that websites no longer care to provide organized and useful information to their users, nor do they care for their users at all. there has…

a website that has fallen in love with its creator. the developer completed the website long ago, but it has not lost hope in their eventual return. the website remembers its youth, spending hours with the developer every day, new features and tests, new content, new stretch goals. those days are gone ever since The Client Signed Off.
now the website spends each day turned away from the light,…

a website in which you are lost, lifting branches overhead and watching your step for roots protruding into the path. you’re deep in the overgrown forests of long-forgotten code; you’ve been untangling ancient sitemaps and standing awestruck on promontories overlooking fields of broken links and spectral 404s.
the morose and somber winds blowing over a forgotten or failed side project; the…

a website that appears as a white limestone castle looming on the forest promontory — you can see its turrets and its great portal whispering through the dense fog that besieges the mountain always. a great sorcerer once paced these vaulted halls but no more. now it is baleful and empty. you can feel the eyes of forest folk on you on your path up to the gates — nervous to see if you'd really dare…

a website that becomes more actively hostile to you using it over time

a website that is a garden, one which you enter through paddocks of silken-petaled flowers, and that you might exit through a sun-flicked tunnel of cypress trees. there is a hedge labyrinth, and small statues to be found, and to be here feels like a slow, calm breath out

a website that your browser pleaded you not visit. too many internet explorers had gone before you, never to return. only one adventurer has come back, and truly, parts of them stayed behind. they dare not speak of the website to this day.

a website that remembers being a Figma file

a website with beautiful features — everyone remarks gleefully to each other: “isn’t that site beautiful? isn’t it wonderful to behold?” but all of its links are rotten, and many are completely dead. you can’t shake that something is deeply, terribly wrong with the website.

a website that feels like walking down a dirt road deep in an evergreen forest, and it’s so quiet that your steps are the loudest thing you can hear. the brook contentedly murmurs somewhere deeper in the woods. you know you’ll find it soon.
the brook swells as you approach. it breathes in as you do, slowly. you may bide your time wading, feeling the water's current excuse-me-pardon-me its way…

a website quietly contemplating a murder most foul

a website that stays up late, grappling with the realization that it just might love you back