When I was DJing, my entire world revolved around attention — how to hold it, bend it, stretch it, and earn it through track selection, transitions, and the ebb and flows of a mix. The handful of times I DJed live in front of an audience, it was also about reading the room, sculpting energy from it. Even in my recorded mixes on SoundCloud and MixCloud (and the many others under earlier monikers), I was chasing that same sense of curation and communion. That feeling never left me. It just changed medium.

The Set Became a Media Server

When I started building my Jellyfin server — an open-source media server platform — although this new medium caught my attention, I thought I was walking away from music, and that actually made me a little sad. Initially, it was just a private library for shows, anime, and movies. But the deeper I went with it, into metadata, artwork, media selection, fulfilling requests, and opening it up to others — the more I realized I was doing the same thing: curating, sequencing, and designing experiences.

Netflix, Spotify, YouTube — and the Shaping of Culture

Netflix, Spotify, and YouTube are among the most powerful cultural curators of our time. Their algorithms and reach shape what billions of people watch, listen to, and talk about. By blending personalization with massive libraries and original content, they can turn obscure artists or stories into global hits. For better or worse, they don’t just reflect taste — they define it, teaching us what counts as good, diverse, or trending.

My Media Server as Counterculture

My Jellyfin server — affectionately named yeahnoforsure, with 15 users — is my response to that. It borrows what's great about those platforms but rejects what I find hollow about them. Discovery still happens, but it’s rooted in human attention, not an algorithm’s guesswork. Every show, movie, anime, K-drama, documentary, concert, music video, course, and song is handpicked by me or by the server's other users. It’s less about what’s popular and more about what feels intentional — a curated corner of the internet built from genuine attention, not data.

At first glance, a media server might look like a storage project. But for me, it’s more like a DJ set that never ends. Each piece of media, each backdrop or logo, each sequence of recommendations is a kind of transition — between moods, genres, and worlds. You might find the latest Marc Maron HBO comedy special sitting beside a beautifully produced Perfume concert from 2016; the shift is emotional, not just categorical.

Engineering Meaning

In a way, I’m working within Jellyfin’s architecture to engineer meaning — tuning the emotional frequency of the libraries I build. A film or show doesn’t carry meaning on its own; its significance emerges from context — how it’s framed, sequenced, and connected to everything around it.

I can’t speak for everyone who uses my server, but for me, it’s more than just consumption — it’s inhabiting a space I’ve tuned, a quiet frequency of our shared taste. It’s a space we’re building together, one we get to define for ourselves.

DJing taught me how to shape context. Jellyfin allows me to engineer meaning.

Selection as Expression

Taste is what makes a DJ mix personal. It's also what makes a media server human. Algorithms can recommend; only a person can express.

What I choose to host — The Chair Company (Tim Robinson's new HBO Max show), Yumi's Cells (a semi-animated romcom K-drama), a Rosebud Baker comedy special, BAND-MAID's 10th anniversary concert, Roy Choi's MasterClass on intuitive cooking — say as much about me as any playlist ever could. It’s my map of curiosity: what I think deserves to be remembered, what I believe might move someone else.

On Access

DJing was partly about making things accessible — blending the familiar with the underground, hoping to expand people’s taste just a bit — at least from the way I see the world. I feel the same about media.

I don’t think culture should be locked behind gatekeepers — companies like Netflix, Amazon, or Hulu, with rising prices and intrusive ads, or platforms like Spotify and Apple Music that promote some artists at the expense of others. I prefer something more organic and community-driven — where people can experience media freely, without being told what to like.

On my server, everything is ad-free, shared, and open to request. If someone wants to see something new, they can request it, and hopefully watch something they might never have discovered otherwise. It’s not commerce — it’s connection and culture, freely shared instead of locked away.

Connection

Most importantly, the system I've built helps me stay connected with people through the media we share. Whether we're watching or listening together or just talking about it later, sharing media is a meaningful way for us to connect. For me and my loved ones especially, media has always been a bridge — a way of staying in rhythm with each other.

Even the Discord server I first made for announcements and troubleshooting has evolved into a space for conversations — reactions, recommendations, reflections. From sharing a DJ set on a dance floor to sharing media online, that same sense of communion still hums underneath it all.

On Order, Creativity, and DJing

Now that yeahnoforsure has reached a kind of critical mass — not 100% finished, but stable and thriving — my attention has started to drift back toward DJing and music production. What I’ve learned through building and organizing the server is that order doesn’t stifle creativity; it actually makes space for it — it invites it.

Creativity can’t always thrive in clutter. When everything is scattered, your mind mirrors that noise. But when things are organized, when systems work quietly in the background, attention becomes available again. That’s when you start to notice connections, patterns, and sparks you might’ve missed before.

Inviting creativity through order isn’t about perfection; it’s about clarity. Make your environment — digital or physical — a place where ideas can land without tripping over chaos. Label things. Name your folders clearly. Know where everything lives. Own your space. Create systems that feel intuitive to you. The goal isn’t to tame creativity but to prepare a space where it wants to return.

That’s what happened with yeahnoforsure. The more organized it became, the more it started to feel like a creative playground — one where structure quietly supports the flow of imagination. Order doesn’t cage creativity; it gives it rhythm — something to dance with. Even DJs need an organized library to find their flow.

All that structuring, cataloging, and refining wasn’t just about media — it was about tuning my own attention. And now that things feel more in rhythm, I can feel that old impulse returning: to DJ, mix, and build emotional arcs again.

So — look out for some music again soon.

Curious?

Think I'm just being grandiose about the server?

Come see for yourself.

The server has apps on Android TV, Google TV, Fire TV, Roku, Apple TV, LG, Samsung, iOS, Android, macOS, and Windows. You can request anything you’d like added — it’ll usually find its way there.

Lmk.