Why Retard Media Don’t Scale

Recently, I started a new blogging network (using WordPress) and a friend reminded me that WordPress has scaling issues. I acknowledge that — from a retard media perspective. In retard media, the aim is to create one publication that thousands or even many millions of people follow, pay attention to, read, or “consume” in some way… — and perhaps even also “join” as fans, “content aficionados” or something like that. In that sense, retard media are a very “deep web” phenomenon: they are temples for vast numbers of faithful readers (Google and Facebook are prime examples).

Yet in another way, WordPress scales quite well — and crucially: it is precisely the way that the World-Wide Web is actually configured that WordPress functions exceptionally well: as a decentralized information network, interconnected along edges (rather than a centralized system prone to bottlenecks). Note, also, that many of the difficulties commonly experienced online often happen with respect to centralized systems (e.g. not only Google or Facebook, but also very large scale data-oriented projects, such as Netflix) which operate along a retard media model of selling data for consumption (i.e., a consumer “paid content” scheme).

Since WordPress does not require inordinate amounts of data processing equipment (as is the case with Google, Facebook and to some extent also data transmission companies such as Youtube and Netflix), it is relatively cheap and easy to set up a WordPress website / blog and to thereby create a quite powerful content management system on a more-or-less shoestring budget.

What is more, the “content” created by using WordPress can subsequently be easily stored in static HTML files, such that vast amounts of data can be very easily served at virtually no cost whatsoever.