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Blogs used to be different

jetgirl.art

11–20 of 38 posts

Re: Blogs used to be different

#11
post #6

We've collectively learned that besides the OPSEC concerns most of the "diary" type posting is very boring to consume (most people are boring) and therefore it's pretty likely your posts aren't that great either. To make them interesting you must put effort, which we see some people doing, but anyone who has done it knows how the amount of effort needed detracts from the actual meaningful part of experiences/life/rel…

> most people are boring

Nah. Unless your benchmark is "interesting to every person on the planet", in which case, sure. But then, I'd say that following celebrity and politician gossip is far less productive than following the life of my family, friends, and relatives.

Almost every person is interesting to several dozen other people. Exceptions happen, but are relatively rare.

You're correct on the other count: writing takes effort. Not writing to make things interesting, just... writing in general. If you want to summarize your day, it's gonna cost you 30 minutes of brain work. If you want to post to your Instagram reel, Snapchat, or whatever, just point your phone at your surroundings and hold the record button down for 10 seconds or so.

Re: Blogs used to be different

#13
Early generations of 'social media', or in the context of this post I guess 'microblogging' were super personal, basic, and of the moment (without followup for 24hrs when another post happened). I'm talking like early Twitter posts would be what people were having for lunch. Or that they just woke up and were enjoying a coffee. And the classic "poopin'". It was like that for at least a few years before the posts got longer and more directed to conversational context or 'trying to say something more'.

Re: Blogs used to be different

#14
post #6

We've collectively learned that besides the OPSEC concerns most of the "diary" type posting is very boring to consume (most people are boring) and therefore it's pretty likely your posts aren't that great either. To make them interesting you must put effort, which we see some people doing, but anyone who has done it knows how the amount of effort needed detracts from the actual meaningful part of experiences/life/rel…

    most of the "diary" type posting is very boring to consume 
    (most people are boring) 
The "peak Livejournal era" (2001-2010?) was so much fun to me. I had a lot of friends with LJs. These were people I knew so their "boring" stuff was enjoyable to read. I had maybe a dozen or two friends who mutually followed me, plus there were some public figures with LJs I followed as well.

I really enjoyed the coziness and uncommercial-ness of it. People wrote so much more openly and thoughtfully.

I understand the OPSEC issues mentioned by the linked article, but the faux example he posted is kind of an unrealistic caricature. I don't remember people typically doing that kind of OPSEC-nightmare "live blogging" type stuff on noncommercial personal blogs.

Re: Blogs used to be different

#15

> We didn't have the same concept of OPSEC back in the early 2000's (lol Foursquare wtf were we thinking) and the idea of sitting down at the end of the day and pouring everything that happened into a journal entry was completely normal. I was there, and we weren't all like this. I can remember being offended when a friend checked me into a location with foursquare, broadcasting my location out to the world. I felt s…

20+ years isn't exactly "recently" in internet time. And while early 2000s might be pushing it, in the 1990s, it was most certainly normal for people to put their home phone numbers in Usenet signatures. The internet was initially just this small subculture thing for nerds, generally not on the radar of anyone not wishing you well. Your employer wasn't there. Your parents weren't there. Your stalker wasn't there. You…

yeah by 2000ish I really didn't see egregious opsec violations at all as a rule. the world described by the linked article doesn't really match my experiences.

if you were tech-savvy enough to blog, you were tech-savvy enough to have some clue about that stuff.

also, people weren't like, "liveblogging." they didn't have personal internet devices in their pockets. typical personal noncommercial blogging was people talking about stuff they did days or weeks ago. and even early platforms like Livejournal had visibility filters on posts; people kept the personal stuff friends-only

that was just my personal experience. i guess the author had a different one

Re: Blogs used to be different

#16

> blogs weren't a place to promote yourself and your side hustle. Blogs were personal diaries. We didn't have the same concept of OPSEC back in the early 2000's OPSEC has nothing to do with it. People used pseudonyms by default in the 1990s, and blocked Doubleclick (a.k.a. Google) in their ~/.hosts files. Blogs were non-commercial places where we worked out ideas and offered useful information.

Lots of people used real names on Usenet at least into the 1990s. It probably changed with eternal September.

Re: Blogs used to be different

#20
Well, yeah. But some of us were there before the beginning. Wordpress? Huh? You wrote your own code or you just wrote raw HTML.

1997 also was mostly in the books before the word "blog" ever appeared. The number of us writing on the "internet" numbered in the low thousands, not the millions.

My entire readership was online, not in-person, friends. If they knew I "wrote on the internet," my in-person associates didn't give a shit and probably didn't know how to use a browser yet.

Most of us pioneers are scattered to the winds, and a substantial number are dead now.

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