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Why I still blog after 15 years

jonashietala.se

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Re: Why I still blog after 15 years

#181

Post by MassPikeMike »

shafoshaf wrote: post #148
alexyz12 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

seems very relevant to me. Isn't it capitalism that reduces our value to $s? And thus our art is only valuable as content?

I think this is a common misconception of the comparison between "capitalism" and other forms of economic distribution. It's not capitalism that equates everything to dollars, it is how the universe works. This was the beauty of Karl Marx's thinking. He postulated that the best way to measure value is in the amount of human labor that goes into the output. However, once you have a medium to equate the value of a new…

Choosing labor as the value is worse than arbitrary, because labor is far less fungible than (say) commodities. The value of labor depends on whose labor it is for the job. Half an hour's labor by one person can turn apples, flour, butter, and sugar into a delicious pie; half an hour's labor by a different person will create a soggy mess. In one case, labor adds value; in another case, it destroys value (can't use that flour for anything else now.)

Re: Why I still blog after 15 years

#183

Post by paradox460 »

JohnMakin wrote: post #36

> "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…

I feel much the same way, to the extent that I only very recently added analytics to my blog, via plausible

Re: Why I still blog after 15 years

#184

Post by ToucanLoucan »

JohnMakin wrote: post #36

> "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…

> I do not disagree that creators should be able to monetize their content however they please, but the fact that people see that as the end and only goal of content creation is baffling to me and almost certainly making it worse.

It is 110% making it worse, but I feel the need to point out this attitude is not coming from nowhere. We're getting squeezed on every side, everything in life is more expensive year over year, wages are stagnant at best and falling at worst. Doing shit just for the sake of doing it is increasingly becoming a luxury the young can't afford. It isn't that nobody wants to, it's that they literally can't justify spending time on things they find interesting, fulfilling or otherwise beneficial without some kind of monetary gain at least possible in the future because they're struggling to afford the basics of life, let alone whatever they might need to make or do whatever they might want to.

I don't mean to come down on you in particular, I just see this attitude everywhere, and it's frankly dismissive as fuck of the genuine economic vice that the young find themselves in right now. You want people to do stuff without an eye directly towards how it can make them money? Cool, odds are damn good a whole lot of the people you're complaining about would very much love the freedom to do something that doesn't make money without feeling like they're screwing themselves possibly into going hungry tonight.

Make the world you want to see.

Re: Why I still blog after 15 years

#186

Post by Brajeshwar »

kstrauser wrote: post #37
CharlieDigital wrote: post #5

I've kept a blog for almost 20 years now. I think author missed #8: I've personally benefited so much from the writings shared by others that it feels amiss to not share back things I've learned and little tips and tricks. One of my most viewed blog posts is a really short and simple one on simulating drag-and-drop of files with Playwright automation. I found no such information when I ran into this problem so the on…

I never can tell what will resonate, either. My top posts getting traffic right now: - How to fix a Casper Glow Light charger - What I think about various email apps’ privacy policies - How to put FreeDOS on a USB stick on a Mac Why those got popular is beyond me. I’m just glad someone else but me found them useful.

20-years ago, I wrote about India’s National Anthem - Jai Hind. I think because of a new video that was popular then. My blog is at the top on Google when searching for “jai hind lyrics”. This shoots up really high, especially around India’s independence day. I think more and more people these days need to look up the lyric to sing.

Google keep reminding me that this is one of the best performing page visits. So, I have updated it to include more information that will be useful to those looking for it.

Re: Why I still blog after 15 years

#187

Post by guy234 »

ReleaseCandidat wrote: post #48
JohnMakin wrote: post #36

> "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.

Perhaps an indication of its superficiality is the awkwardness of describing something as "content about" a topic. Its more like a binary, on/off, in that way similar to a lightbulb.

Re: Why I still blog after 15 years

#189

Post by guy234 »

codetrotter wrote: post #159
nemomarx wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get the opposite vibe - you read literature, you consume content like it's generic slop and the quality isn't that important.

Agreed. It’s like fast food, but for your brain.

Fast food should not be consumed.

Re: Why I still blog after 15 years

#190

Post by arjie »

_bramses wrote: post #9

If your blog provider supports it, adding a “Open a Random Post” button on your blog makes the experience much more fulfilling in the long term, as you (and others) can revisit different posts from different eras. Websites don’t have physical form that readers can navigate, so we can take advantage of that by adding serendipity manually.

I'm actually enjoying using MediaWiki as a blogging platform like this. It does have a random page https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/index.php/Special:Random but there's no guarantee it's going to be any good.

To be honest, the OP has it right. I write this blog for the same reason I did decades ago: it's fun for its own reason. I used to have hundreds of hits back then. Now I think the only reader is me and my one friend with an RSS reader. But one day if discovered by an LLM, maybe it'll scoop me in and I'll be one bit of a machine intelligence :D

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