Are we seeing a resurgence of personal blogging?

Back in the height of the Blogger, Wordpress, Typepad, LiveJournal and Tumblr eras (circa 2000-2010), we saw a proliferation of blogs dominate internet content -- high school students, college students, memers, film buffs, artists, new parents, cancer survivors, photographers, emo kids, and curators (ahem Tumblr)...name your niche -- it felt like everyone had a blog. And back then, it seemed like everyone had just enough of an attention span to make the content engaging (sure...debatable) and to keep the blogs going for years.

The content was personal, short-to-long form, quirky, and occasionally fun. Bloggers wrote about their personal experiences, their emerging belief systems, the things they were learning about life and love, the joys and struggles of being an expat (me), the food they were eating and making -- a blog was a chance to stumble upon a person you didn't know who had shared life experiences or experiences wildly different from your own, but from whom you had something to learn about life. I, like many others at the time, befriended other bloggers and had the opportunity to meet several of them in real life. And the connections were instant and real. And this was an era which holds a special place in my heart.

Back then, the internet was a community of strangers, brought together by common interests and intellectual differences, when vitriol was frowned upon, and the opportunity to learn from someone was just that...an opportunity. Nobody shamed each other for poorly-cited or biased data points and nobody discredited someone's opinion on the basis of a different and equally valid (or not) opinion.

Something changed.

I have a lot of thoughts on just when and why it did change, but it did. And we went from people brought together and bound both through our similarities and differences, to an era of ego and punditry and critique. And now it feels like every blog is an assessment or a "hot take" or a severe take down (or unabated worship) of something bigger and "important". The "blogging" sphere seems dominated by political commentators and art critics and data nerds trying to proselytize their readers in order to be acknowledged, respected, admired, and followed. Life became too serious and the world became just a bit more disconnected because of it.

And I feel like I might be seeing some old school blogger types on Paragraph. Perhaps it's escapism or the fact that folks on Paragraph aren't here for the page views and just because it's an opportunity to connect. That's something to be hopeful about.

So for what it's worth, I'm going to give this blog a shot. And by blog, I mean the 2000-2010 version of the blog.

(Header image created in Midjourney and there are some funny little doodles in there that make no sense)

Are we seeing a resurgence of personal blogging?

Back in the height of the Blogger, Wordpress, Typepad, LiveJournal and Tumblr eras (circa 2000-2010), we saw a proliferation of blogs dominate internet content -- high school students, college students, memers, film buffs, artists, new parents, cancer survivors, photographers, emo kids, and curators (ahem Tumblr)...name your niche -- it felt like everyone had a blog. And back then, it seemed like everyone had just enough of an attention span to make the content engaging (sure...debatable) and to keep the blogs going for years.

The content was personal, short-to-long form, quirky, and occasionally fun. Bloggers wrote about their personal experiences, their emerging belief systems, the things they were learning about life and love, the joys and struggles of being an expat (me), the food they were eating and making -- a blog was a chance to stumble upon a person you didn't know who had shared life experiences or experiences wildly different from your own, but from whom you had something to learn about life. I, like many others at the time, befriended other bloggers and had the opportunity to meet several of them in real life. And the connections were instant and real. And this was an era which holds a special place in my heart.

Back then, the internet was a community of strangers, brought together by common interests and intellectual differences, when vitriol was frowned upon, and the opportunity to learn from someone was just that...an opportunity. Nobody shamed each other for poorly-cited or biased data points and nobody discredited someone's opinion on the basis of a different and equally valid (or not) opinion.

Something changed.

I have a lot of thoughts on just when and why it did change, but it did. And we went from people brought together and bound both through our similarities and differences, to an era of ego and punditry and critique. And now it feels like every blog is an assessment or a "hot take" or a severe take down (or unabated worship) of something bigger and "important". The "blogging" sphere seems dominated by political commentators and art critics and data nerds trying to proselytize their readers in order to be acknowledged, respected, admired, and followed. Life became too serious and the world became just a bit more disconnected because of it.

And I feel like I might be seeing some old school blogger types on Paragraph. Perhaps it's escapism or the fact that folks on Paragraph aren't here for the page views and just because it's an opportunity to connect. That's something to be hopeful about.

So for what it's worth, I'm going to give this blog a shot. And by blog, I mean the 2000-2010 version of the blog.

(Header image created in Midjourney and there are some funny little doodles in there that make no sense)