Hello.
Well, this is all rather familiar. The click and clack of keystrokes, the lines, the aching over the correct design…
Many years ago, personal sites and blogs were the way to read, express, share, for the lowly citizen of planet earth. Sometimes these sites would be absolute creations and fictions, sometimes sharing art, music, politics, history or personal views, or a chronical of what life was like. Since then, corporate social media took over our desire to share, with its desire to monetise.
What began as personal in 1997 is now corporate in 2023.
Changes come. Twitter is falling apart. People have left Facebook.
Instagram, once to share photos, now only wants users to share videos. TikTok is rife. Your content, their ads.
Life is based on an algorithm, and many people now place importance on the engagement of their content. How many views, shares and comments. This can then be linked to their self-esteem. Clicks, likes and shares, equates to
Except, it wasn’t like that in the Blogging Days of Old.
It was easy to set up your own site, and so millions did. A few clicks, and you are there. The big wide world awaits! And with it, you meet people. Some went on to be close friends, who I hold dear to this day, and would never have met if somehow sharing stuff on the internet wasn’t a thing. Some aquaintances, some went on to bigger and better things, making the internet or sharing information their career, with varying degrees of success. Many are employed in traditional media now too.
I made my own self-coded primitive blog in 1997, then migrated to various platforms along the way – Xanga, Blogger, Livejournal, WordPress, then self-hosting. There were various side-projects too, whenever life took a turn for the different; Poetry, music, life updates, photography and crochet to name a few.
But over time, I realised publishing yourself on the internet for anyone to see wasn’t really “for” me any more. Somehow along the way it had become convoluted. I had lost my sense of self, had no desire to publish my own thoughts, when so many others spoke their truths more eloquently. My activities were no longer exciting to anyone but myself. I had no desire to share.
Perhaps using other social media took away the desire, too. Why make something yourself, when in a few taps and with a few words, you can briefly share a snippet?
Snippets do not always tell the whole story.
There are many of us old-schoolers who perished along the way, either in terms of actually losing their own life, or deciding to abandon their creative output or personal sites.
This morning, reading Mastodon posts, I remembered Feedly. I opened the site, and caught up on some old posts, that friends had made, years ago. I felt inspired again, to open up a box, share some pictures, and type.
This is here, it’s back for now, and it will be used as a general splurging site.
It’s back to what it was before for me.
pic, song, words – a picture, a song, and some words.
Perhaps this is a welcome back, from a welcome break?
Hello.
A Picture, A Song, Some Words 