every year
i enter
and it seems like i'll win, we'll win
the salt
marsh

the birds fly close up
in the little player
another successful video without crashing

rolling the stems
with fingers
rowing towards
bridge

originally published here.

In the last few years, websites and social media platforms have introduced explore pages/tabs into their interfaces. Usually these are just feeds masquerading as explore pages. Other times they are simply static curated “staff picks” lists, or personalized recommendation pages. To me, these pages don’t live up to the name “explore.” A feed is based around time, usually sorted reverse chronologically, whereas an explore page reveals the expansiveness of a website by pulling from disparate sources, indifferent to time, allowing one to jump into the depths of something entirely new. Even personalized recommendation pages like Instagram’s explore tab aren’t really explore pages either because they are limited to a user’s interests/similarities to other users on the platform. Being fed similar content based on your likes isn’t the same as exploring the vastness of a platform. Explore pages are unique in that they unearth things that are not necessarily the most popular or the most recent. When explore pages are built this way, it allows users to approach a platform with an open mind and with less expectations. Explore pages should make you feel a sense of excitement similar to the feeling of exploring a new place.