Live journal anyone ?
Why I still blog after 15 years
51–60 of 230 posts
Re: Why I still blog after 15 years
#52Your trajectory is quite similar to mine, particularly working with Kohana and Jekyll over the years.
My blog, in its current iteration, has also recently turned 15 (first post on June 27th, 2009). Reflecting on this long journey and how it has helped my career, I've decided to write a book about the experience.
If you'll excuse a bit of self-promotion, those interested can find out more at https://codertocto.com.
I hope sharing my journey might be helpful to others on a similar path.
Re: Why I still blog after 15 years
#53"I keep this blog for me to write, not necessarily for others to read." This is the key to do anything over a long period of time but certainly applies to blogging. Nothing is better than intrinsic motivation and something you do for yourself. I have a blog that I try to keep up with. I fail to be consistent and one reason always has been me asking "Who should I write it for" instead of "What do I want to write about…
It’s a spirit from the old Internet that we’ve all but lost. Replaced with the toxic “write for engagement” spirit that brought us SEO, blogspam, influencers, “YouTube Face” thumbnails, ragebait, and now AI slop. Same for writing and releasing open source software. Write software that you want to write and don’t worry about how many users you have or how many pull requests you get or how many GitHub stars you have. T…
I also feel this with X/Twitter, where everything feels like a promotion for a course or a book or a new product.
Posting things because they are fun to write is a lost art.
Re: Why I still blog after 15 years
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s a spirit from the old Internet that we’ve all but lost. Replaced with the toxic “write for engagement” spirit that brought us SEO, blogspam, influencers, “YouTube Face” thumbnails, ragebait, and now AI slop. Same for writing and releasing open source software. Write software that you want to write and don’t worry about how many users you have or how many pull requests you get or how many GitHub stars you have. T…
I think some of the blame has to do with how metrics and analytics started taking over every aspect of online culture (as is hinted at). I noticed I tried to optimize my blog more when I was using Google Analytics; that whole setup really pushes you to look at certain metrics like time on site, bounce rate, etc. The best decision I've made for blogging sanity a few years back was to switch to a simple self-hosted ana…
I think it is a huge mistake to use metrics, analytics, or any kind of quantified “audience measurement” to justify or rank a creative endeavor.
Re: Why I still blog after 15 years
#55> "I keep this blog for me to write, not necessarily for others to read." This is now to me the "old school" internet creator attitude (that I still possess). I don't blog as much any more but do create content elsewhere - a lot of it is for my own enjoyment and creative outlet, to blow off steam, whatever - the fact that other people may want to watch it is secondary. I do try to do things people want, but only if I…
> content creation I seriously hate the term "content" used for "creative output". It is a terrible, derogatory word, that makes me sad. Content is only there to have something to sell, to fill the blank space around ads, the actual content of the content doesn't matter. That people refer to themselves as "content creators" is a sign that they see the value of their creative output only to make money.
Welcome to the hyper capitalist world that has been created over the past 60 years. This is the result of always needed growth in your economic system.
Re: Why I still blog after 15 years
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Still, it's surprising that they can't even conceive of doing anything without profit motive as an incentive. This isn't the first time I've heard of this kind of inter-generational dialogue. Perhaps Millennials and Gen-X are uniquely idealistic (or naïve) generations.
The "Hawk Tuah" girl is a perfect example to me. She had a funny moment, and I think 15-20 years ago it probably would have just been a funny meme for a few years and a "oh you're that girl from the meme" at parties for her entire 20's. Like that's exactly how that would have played out. Now she quit her job, has sponsorships, got a major podcast deal - over a single viral moment. It's nutty to me, personally, but pe…
Interesting point. I'm not sure what her plan for her life was, but I could understand her making that decision if the rather explicit nature of her comments precluded it. Maybe she felt she had no choice but to own it.
Re: Why I still blog after 15 years
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Still, it's surprising that they can't even conceive of doing anything without profit motive as an incentive. This isn't the first time I've heard of this kind of inter-generational dialogue. Perhaps Millennials and Gen-X are uniquely idealistic (or naïve) generations.
The "Hawk Tuah" girl is a perfect example to me. She had a funny moment, and I think 15-20 years ago it probably would have just been a funny meme for a few years and a "oh you're that girl from the meme" at parties for her entire 20's. Like that's exactly how that would have played out. Now she quit her job, has sponsorships, got a major podcast deal - over a single viral moment. It's nutty to me, personally, but pe…
Anything to distract from the dystopia we live in. Ironically what you describe sounds like that season 1 of black mirror episode
Re: Why I still blog after 15 years
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Still, it's surprising that they can't even conceive of doing anything without profit motive as an incentive. This isn't the first time I've heard of this kind of inter-generational dialogue. Perhaps Millennials and Gen-X are uniquely idealistic (or naïve) generations.
The "Hawk Tuah" girl is a perfect example to me. She had a funny moment, and I think 15-20 years ago it probably would have just been a funny meme for a few years and a "oh you're that girl from the meme" at parties for her entire 20's. Like that's exactly how that would have played out. Now she quit her job, has sponsorships, got a major podcast deal - over a single viral moment. It's nutty to me, personally, but pe…
15 years ago "Shit My Dad Says" got a TV show. People have spun momentary stardom into book deals and gigs forever. NYC, Hollywood, all the music cities past and present, and the last couple of SV booms were built on trying to generate it. "You're good at that, you should sell it" has been a constant refrain to creatives with any level of skill for decades. Some people went for it.
The scale changed, and that's meaningful, but some kinds of people have always been on the lookout for a path to fortune.
Re: Why I still blog after 15 years
#59If you have stopped blogging, been meaning to get back on it, or simply want to start, but been put off by the popular platform options, I'm working on a blogging platform myself that sheds the crummy modern bits of the web: https://lmno.lol. Here's my own blog https://lmno.lol/alvaro (about 10 years worth of posts). You can read the blogs on your phone, your desktop, your terminal. No JS needed.
Coincidentally the platform hits nearly all of the wished items in this recent lobste.rs post https://lobste.rs/s/d1n9k6/kind_websites_i_like
You can drag and drop your entire blog from a markdown file https://indieweb.social/@xenodium/112265481282475542 User your favorite text editor to write.
No need to sign up or log in to try it out. You can edit ephemeral blogs.
I haven't officially launched, but if you'd like to get blogging, I'll be happy to share an invite code to get you started now. Ping help AT lmno.lol.
Re: Why I still blog after 15 years
#60Something that gives me pause (to actually write into a blog) or to put up any toy projects / exploratory code as FOSS is I am not too keen on the idea of LLM companies and similar scraping that for their dataset [1].
Its not really a new problem, scraping the web and similar for monetary profit has been a thing for decades, but it feels worse in some ways? At least I certainly have paused and had more of a reluctance to making minor things available with no strings attached than I historically have been.
Same goes for writing into sites like HN or Reddit really.
Perhaps that is being selfish, after all there is some value in documenting things for other humans to find out about, maybe time-capsule of a blog is a better fit for this? Although blogging about anything particularly niche / context heavy is likely irrelevant a few years on.
EDIT:
[1] As in not help them even in a minuscule way, anymore than has already been done with them buying / scraping any public content already written.