More discussion on "Is maintaining a personal blog still worth it?": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42685534
Why blog if nobody reads it?
341–350 of 373 posts
Re: Why blog if nobody reads it?
#342Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it may be the case that your possession of a tidbit of trivia and your particular interpretation of changes/reforms that came after Vatican II is causing you to interpret my comment in a different light than it was meant. I was actually envisioning something closer to the monastery that Alyosha was a part of in The Brothers Karamazov. It reminds me of the cliché admonishment of priests that pray in the street…
>If you know you will not (or perhaps should not) blog to gain an audience, why should you do it? I'm an atheist, so (knowing there are no gods) should I perform a ritual? Is the ritual for the gods' benefit, or for mine? Is the ritual for its own sake, something we do because we have always done it?
I can't answer those questions, but I have some comments. My question, which you quoted, was intended to be rhetorical and perhaps your questions are as well.
There is nothing exclusive about being atheist with regards to those questions. Belief in God (especially a deist or non-interventionist God) doesn't provide any clear answer. You may be thinking about a specific religion or spiritual dogma proposing answers to that question, but that would require some kind of revelation in the form of a prophet, inspired scripture, mystical/divine encounter, etc.
Another idea that pops to mind is again related to the Vedas, the oldest spiritual texts that I am aware of. I couldn't find the exact percentage but most commentaries I have read indicate that a significantly large portion of those scriptures are dedicated to ritual observance. Things like weddings, births, funerals, etc.
Some of the oldest archeological sites, like the notorious Göbekli Tepe, appear to be ritual sites. There is a lot of work to do there so I don't think our understanding is definitive at this point. But it does show how far back in our history that rituals appear to go (several thousands of years). It might even be worth pondering the question: what came first, ritual or a belief in god(s)?
So it is not really surprising that the shadow of ritual appears even within the most secular and rationalist modern contexts. What that means and how it should effect your own decisions is something I believe is a personal matter.
Re: Why blog if nobody reads it?
#343Totally tangential, but I was thinking this morning about my experience as a kid when my parents forced me to be an alter boy at our local church. There are these occasional observances where the church is obligated to put on a special service, part of a liturgical calendar. Sometimes these happen at like 11am on a Wednesday. It was nice to get out of school to go and burn some incense and follow the priest around wh…
Where was this? Because in Italy i've never heard of anyone allowed to miss school for that by their parents.
It was in Canada although I don't imagine that has any bearing on the situation. It was also at a Catholic private school that shared the property with the church. I literally walked like 20 meters from the school building across the parking lot to the church and it typically only took 1 hour or so. In my own memory, people would get out of school for all manner of reasons, from sports to even family vacations, for entire days with no one batting an eye. I find it hard to imagine any school system so strict that a kid couldn't get dispensation for 1 hour of extracurricular activities during the school day.
Re: Why blog if nobody reads it?
#344Earlier quoted context omitted.
I ran a personal blog ~2007-2013, retiring it after one-too-many'a THC-infused evening of personal expression. Several of my posts received 100k+ views, one with 1M+, typically exploring minor technical hacks. A couple posts resulted in minor sales of bespoke hardware adapters, which was a nice "side hustle" for a few years. None of this would ever had made me rich, but it was a neat introduction to information shari…
> Several of my posts received 100k+ views, one with 1M+, typically exploring minor technical hacks. 1M+ is definitely no one
You are correct, I am just another "no one" (with a few viral hits).
Re: Why blog if nobody reads it?
#345Re: Why blog if nobody reads it?
#346Writing on a blog is a very inexpensive way to establish your credibility about different subjects. This pays off later down the line when you can link people to things you've written in the past. Credibility is a very valuable commodity. It's worth investing in ways to build more of it. Don't assume people will stumble across your content (though they will eventually via Google). Actively send links to people who yo…
This is precisely why I am suspicious of most "free" online resources out there. When one writes to establish themselves as a credible source or as authority on a subject, they are flipping the target of the writing. They are making it all about the author , and not the reader/student. This is similar to what happens with academic writing, where using an approachable tone of voice can be seen as hurtful to the author…
Writing to teach others is a much more effective way of establishing credibility than writing to just show off.
There is a reason Andrej Karpathy has such a great reputation. His credentials are impressive, but the quality of his teaching content is spectacular.
Re: Why blog if nobody reads it?
#347I just wish there was a search engine to find a blog now. It's really hard to find a blog using Google search or at least an easy way to find a personal blog.
There is also the wonderful ooh.directory - https://ooh.directory/
Re: Why blog if nobody reads it?
#348I write blog posts when I solve a problem that I've been working on. Every couple of months I'll get an email from a stranger who read my blog post on how I solved X problem with Z solution.
It's a great feeling knowing that someone, somewhere not only had the same problem you had but you were able to help them solve it.
If you are writing on the Internet there is a good chance that someone will read it someday.
Re: Why blog if nobody reads it?
#349Earlier quoted context omitted.
> With social referral traffic now completely dead, the only traffic I get to my blog is when my posts appear on Hacker News Not being a blog writer, that seems rather crazy to hear with how "social" the WWW has supposedly gotten. WP claims, there's 33 sites "with at least 100 million (monthly) active users". [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_platforms_with_... Top sites are up at multi-1000 millio…
From my anecdotal experience, of what my close friends share with me via DM these days, sadly it is indeed 95% video, and it is indeed 95% Instagram / TikTok / Facebook / Twitter / YouTube (in descending order). I continue to share with them 75% long-form articles, and 75% personal web sites / mainstream media web sites.
I actually looked a bit yesterday, and checked FB particularly to see what the situation was, and maybe have my own anecdotal take.
At least part of what I found was that there did not seem to be much actual discussion. It didn't really even matter whether it was a video, a text article (like making food), or an event. A huge percentage of "conversations" ended up being nothing more than notification references after the first 20-50 comments. It was really rather surreal to look at. I hadn't logged on in a while.
Initially, I couldn't even tell what was going on. Comment after comment where people just stated someone's name and then someone replied with someone else's name. In most cases, once the back-and-forth name reffing started, all actual conversation died quickly.
It's technically "sharing", since they're notifying FB members of being mentioned somewhere. Yet it doesn't really go anywhere externally, and very quickly kills off all further discussion in thread.
Re: Why blog if nobody reads it?
#350I feel in a similar way when creating and open-sourcing software solutions to problems that no one except me might ever care about.