The Verge published an article titled “bring back personal blogging”. It starts:

In the beginning, there were blogs, and they were the original social web. We built community. We found our people. We wrote personally. We wrote frequently. We self-policed, and we linked to each other so that newbies could discover new and good blogs.

I want to go back there.

It was published on December 31, 2022, the time of the year when we all feel that energy to look at the compass and at the map, to calibrate, and to course correct. “It’s not too late”, we think.

Some commenters say that blogging is back with a vengeance. Surreptitiously, it has taken the form of newsletters and substacks.

I beg to differ.

Blogs never went extinct and blogging is more than publishing thoughts, essays, and personal stuff.

Blogging is owning your little corner of the internet. Owning your content, your domain name, the aesthetics of your website (your theme), the freedom to tinker with the front-end and back-end, and much more.

Substacks and newsletters taste like prepackaged food to me, and look like “this is a post full of commonplaces to lure you into the top of my funnel so I can sell you an online course later on.”

The packaging in itself is also a glitch. The finest maguro and the cheapest kamaboko come in the same package. Tweets and substacks look pretty much the same, regardless of the aesthetic sensitivity of the creator. We can do better.

I hope that The Verge is right and we see a return to the happy times. The social media swell is perhaps coming to its end.

The only social media app that I use is Instagram. This for the strict purpose of staying connected with friends that I wouldn’t be able to contact otherwise (I don’t have their cell numbers or email addresses). I also keep a twitter account for daydreaming purposes: I fantasize about using twitter as a replacement for the comments section of blogs.

little corners

Here are two personal sites that I found in the last couple of days. One I find fascinating for its ambition of totalization, the other for its simplicity and design.

Chris Aldrich

Andy Bell

following the white rabbit

In my explorations of personal blogs, I’ve stumbled upon a few disciples of the IndieWeb movement. Many of their principles are in harmony with my view of the web. But I’m afraid of going down the rabbit hole and joining Cooper in his interstellar voyage.