# Just Fucking Use Markdown Why the fuck do you need some heavy-ass document format, that needs some bloated fucking word processor gorging on your RAM just to read that shit? I know you probably fucking hate office software anyway, and you're fucking right. Why the fuck do you need an entire fuckmothering *app* for every fucking device you use just to write something the fuck down? .....oh my god, hold the fuck up. Am I being a fucking moron by assuming you know to use [local-first software](https://localfirstweb.dev/) and not to chain yourself to some [ass-based](https://github.com/panicsteve/cloud-to-butt) service like Notion? Just open a fucking text editor and write, you dumbshit. ## What's Markdown? Listen up, fucker, because I'm about to blow your mind, change your life, and free you from that shitshackle you call Office. You know [HTML](https://justfuckingusehtml.com)? The shit that every website you're using is written in? Markdown takes text. Normal text that some non-magical person like you can read. Then it dresses it up in light, easy-to-read markup that even some moron can make basic sense of, and then converts that shit to HTML. Like on a website. > Like on *this* website? Well look at you, you fucking know-it-all. Yes, *like on this website*. Go hit "view source" and see for yourself. So you get the best of both worlds -- formatting like in documents and webpages, but plain text that just about any jackass can decipher. - *Emphasis? Got that.* - **Bold too, motherfucker.** - [It's got links!](https://bhmt.dev/blog/markdown) - And do I need to fucking explain to you that it's got lists? You can take your fucking code -- or anything else you want to view exactly as it was written, `like here, where I *really fucking spell out for your dumb ass* what emphasis look like` -- and wrap it in backticks (\`) to display it as plain text. ```md It'll do whole blocks too, motherfucker, so you can show off *all* your worst fucking code Add the language or the file extension to the end if you want formatting for whatever the fuck you think is going to impress people ```
Need more than that? How impressive is that shit? It can also do forms, content blocks, and *all* that advanced shit HTML comes with out of the box. Because *it's built on fucking HTML, dumbass*. So HTML itself is valid Markdown. Even this section is, itself, a fucking `
`. Don't believe me? Hit "inspect" and see for your fucking self. You can use the whole fucking *range* of HTML elements to structure your content. Which I know you're doing, because you're not one of those annoying fucks that'll just throw a `
` everywhere and use some CSS framework as a crutch over actually learning how to build a fucking layout, *right*? 😒 And if you're that fucking bound to your precious Word you can even use tools like [Pandoc](https://pandoc.org/) to convert the Markdown back to other formats.
> And presentations? First of all, fuck PowerPoint. But fine. [Here's a solution for your fucking slides.](https://marp.app/) There are definitely others, but I don't care enough to find them for you. [You can try this, though.](https://duckduckgo.com/) > I have LibreOffice though... Sure, and that shit's *great*. But it's also *heavy*. Do you *know* how much faster you can just open a plain fucking text editor? Spell check? The fuck do you need that for on a first draft? > But my emails? [Here's a fucking browser extension.](https://github.com/adam-p/markdown-here) Not like you should be rawdogging your compose window in the fucking first place. But we all do that shit, so go ahead. Live dangerously. > What about Excel? Ok, wiseass. You're obviously not going to be writing whole fucking spreadsheets in a text editor. But at that point why the fuck wouldn't you just learn a real fucking programming language? [Even Excel supports Python now](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/introduction-to-python-in-excel-55643c2e-ff56-4168-b1ce-9428c8308545), and if that shit isn't to your liking there are lots of other fucking languages that might be. Anyway, that's not the fucking point of this. ## What's it for? Well it sure the fuck isn't numbers. It's text. Everywhere. Are you using Discord? Github? Slack? *Teams???* All of them support some variation of Markdown. (Reddit too, but we're here to talk about an Aaron Swartz work that *hasn't* since been ruined by a mod from r/jailbait.) No, it's not one single fucking standard like HTML. Some of them pare it down, while others extend it further. But is that *really* harder to keep up with than remembering where every fucking "Bold" button is, on every fucking app you're using, every fucking time that one of them updates? Markdown doesn't give a shit about UI for that. It's just text. You can use it in a chat. You can use it in a plain text editor. You can use it on a command line. You might be using it *already*, and just also be too much of a dumbass to notice. You can convert it to pretty much anything else you could possibly fucking want, for those exceptions where you would even have a reason to once you've seen the fucking light. That bloated fucking *syncing* solution you're using for your bloated fucking document suite? Now, just use anything that supports plain text. Or anything that supports *files* -- files which will also be smaller now. You're fucking welcome. Change tracking? Now you can use a real fucking version control system, like Git. Are you a blogger that needs to get the fuck away from WordPress, for something with governance [less](https://slate.com/technology/2024/10/wordpress-wpengine-matt-mullenweg-drama-explained.html) [toxic](https://www.fastcompany.com/91209753/the-wordpress-drama-could-have-major-implications-for-the-internet) [than](https://www.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/comments/1g2jo1j/explain_me_the_wordpress_drama_like_im_5/) [your](https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/27/24256361/wordpress-wp-engine-drama-explained-matt-mullenweg) [content](https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/12/wordpress-vs-wp-engine-drama-explained/)? Check [Front Matter](frontmatter.codes) the fuck out. You can swap out an entire fucking CMS for data that you define right at the top of your fucking file. That shit looks like this: ```md --- title: Just fucking use Markdown. tags: - markdown - curses date: May 20, 2025 --- Why the fuck do you need some heavy-ass document format..... (and so on) ``` Got a knowledge base? There's lots of shit for that. Once again, I'm not gonna waste precious brainpower listing them all here. I mean fuck, the French and the Germans recently shipped a whole-ass [open-source Notion alternative](https://docs.numerique.gouv.fr/home/), just because they don't want to depend on other American tech entities any more than the rest of the Internet wants to depend on Matt Mullenweg. You can even track all the changes in a version control system. Styling? How many times do I have to motherfucking tell you? This shit is just an extension of HTML, and any HTML is valid Markdown. So you can just fucking use CSS, like I'm doing here. Even *AI* speaks Markdown, for fuck's sake. And I'm not even saying this like a chatbot is smarter than you -- these verbal slot machines literally don't understand *anything*, not even as much as the dumbest ass you could possibly imagine. But I *am* saying that when you ask a cold, unfeeling robot companion to make you feel better about yourself, with "insights" it could never truly perceive, that robot is reading and writing in Markdown. But for what it's worth, that technically *also* means that the robot, if it were in your place, wouldn't know better than to seek out such a hollow comfort either. I'll even throw you another bone and admit that some of us are just using vibes to write our CSS, too. I just happen, when I say it, to be talking about my fucking eyes. --- "Built" (written, really) by [@chaosharmonic](https://bhmt.dev). WTFPL. 🧑‍💻🏴‍☠️ Inspired by [these motherfuckers](https://github.com/lyoshenka/awesome-motherfucking-website).