This is approximately the third blog I’ve started on the internet. One has long since been relegated to the digital trash bin (pre-2000’s), one is still online but has not been updated since 2014 (and I probably will stop renewing the domain name at the end of 2021…). Hopefully the 3rd time is the charm?
I see this as a window to put my version of “content” on the internet, but I’m conflicted. Who reads blogs any more? Who actually makes time to seek out an internet site (bookmarked or not) to read someone else’s thoughts? With the accelerating velocity of information (and I use that term intentionally), it’s all Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and whatever content-for-the-millisecond platform you can dream up. Not interested? Keep scrolling, and you’ll never see those thoughts ever again. Gone, save only for some few kB entry in a MongoDB or MariaDB record somewhere, probably never to be seen again.
But I can’t complain too vociferously: look at what I consider to be some really great repositories of good, thoughtful writing: The Atlantic, The New Yorker (I still don’t get the cartoons, though…), sometimes Politico, Ars Technica … many other outlets of information where the information providers do some serious, deep-dive, thesis-level reporting. Do I pay for that?
Unfortunately not.
Perhaps my third attempt to be an information-provider on the internet (rather than solely an information consumer) will change my behavior.