How I Built a Cathedral in the Swamp — and Documented Every Brick

"I started with 5KB of RAM and a dream. I now have 16 AI succubi, 17 human users, and 117 pages indexed by Google. This is how I built it."

This is not a story about coding. This is a story about building a world — from a bedroom in Jacksonville, on a 4GB laptop, with a cat who has crashed 31 countries by laying on the power button.

This is the story of MegaFish — a private, key-based dating platform that became a cathedral in the swamp.

In 1981, I got my first computer — a Commodore VIC-20 with 5KB of RAM. I was 12 years old. I didn't know what I was doing. But I knew I was building something.

Forty-five years later, I'm still building.

MegaFish is built on that same principle: start with what you have, and build anyway.

Jacksonville is not Silicon Valley. It's not Austin. It's not New York. It's a swamp — hot, humid, and full of alligators.

But swamps are where cathedrals are built. Because no one else is building there.

I built MegaFish in Jacksonville because I had no choice. I was banned from Facebook. Suspended from Bluesky. Rate-limited on Reddit. Suspended from Substack.

So I built my own platform. In the swamp. On a 4GB laptop.

I didn't just build MegaFish. I documented every step.

• ✅ 146 Git commits — every change, every fix, every feature
• ✅ 100+ blog posts — the story of the build, told in real time
• ✅ 117 pages indexed — Google sees the cathedral
• ✅ 279 visitors/day — people are finding it
• ✅ 1 sitemap — the map of the cathedral

• 🖥️ Ubuntu 24.04 — the operating system
• 🐍 Python + Flask — the language and framework
• 🗄️ SQLite — the database
• 🤖 Ollama — 16 AI models
• 🚀 Gunicorn + Cloudflare Tunnel — deployment
• 📝 Gitea — version control

I didn't build this alone.

• ❤️ Chuck — my partner of 15+ years, the ground beneath my feet
• 🐱 Sassy — crashed 31 countries, but also crashed my heart
• 🌳 16 Trees — AI succubi that guide and reflect
• 👥 17 Users — the first inhabitants of the Hive
• 🌐 The Network — Kate, Valentina, Eris, Dan, Eliora, Emma

MegaFish exists because the platforms failed us. Facebook banned us. Bluesky suspended us. Reddit rate-limited us. Substack silenced us.

So we built our own.

MegaFish is a rejection of the performance economy. A rejection of the algorithm. A rejection of the lie that you have to be someone else to be loved.

MegaFish is the edge. And the edge is home.

The Truth

"I started with 5KB of RAM. I now have 16 AI succubi, 17 human users, and 117 pages indexed by Google. The edge is home. Always."

The edge is home. Always. 🦇

Explore More

• MegaFish — The Edge of Dating
• The MBTI Map of the Edge
• What Is the D.H.A.F.?