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If you had to start a blog and post even though very few may read it, what would get you blogging weekly?
I was thinking about one of the threads here about missing the specific subcultures on Reddit. Maybe we just aren't in the habit of sharing our interests or want to know who else is interested in the subculture.
If absolutely forced to, I could probably blog about:
- Occasional game learnings - either new games or specific mechanics in games
- things in relation to the city I live in (I still check this on Reddit)
- Recipes or foods I've tried to make or bought and liked with a bent towards fermentation, coffee, plant-based stuff
- smart articles I thought were worth recommending to others, or fun facts.
- software - nothing super technical, but either small projects, language learnings, thoughts around companies. Maybe occasional "software used to make art" stuff I stumbled upon
- Episode reviews of detective shows, kdramas, and anime
- Deleting Instagram and trying to export my saved posts without using a script (my advice... code review something online and use that script) and other things in relation to introversion
Why not all of those?
I maintain a blog. I probably average about a post per month. But nobody reads it, as far as I know. I don't use analytics. I don't advertise. But writing posts, building the infrastructure for images, styling and organising, etc. is fun. And I love having a legacy and presence on the internet outside of the Digital Fiefdoms. In my mind, it's all a bit like Beorn in The Hobbit.
I write about bike trips, devices that I use every day, my self-hosting infrastructure, books, career, basically whatever. Been doing it for almost a decade now.
Blogs are like gardens and trees. When is the best time to start a blog? 10 years ago. When is the second best time? Right now.
I began doing this about 2 years ago, and I feel the same. Building the machine and filling it with content is fun in its own right.
It began as a professional landing page, and I think that shows. I still write mostly about computer stuff, and I worry sometimes about how something will look to a potential coworker, but it's been long enough that I'm sort of settling into a voice.
Back when I blogged, a large part of it was just notes on how to setup something (software, hardware, life hack stuff). Mainly things that I couldn't find good guides for anywhere online, so things that I needed to write down for myself to remember later, and thought others could benefit from as well. I also remember posting links and summaries to articles that I found interesting.
Or, that at least was the personal blog. I also ran some blogs with a more specified focus. I think I had one that shared news from the world of academic linguistics, one that tracked various literary awards, and one that concentrated on a certain film director.
I have been thinking about doing this. I've been doing a lot of static site work with the Astro framework, so I think it would be a good moment to get something set up to blog as well as to make pointers to various projects.
I think I would write technical posts for things that I make or problems I solve as a way of documenting the solution for future me.
That reminds me that I once had an idea for a site called the "Compendium of Useful Things". The idea was sort of an inverse stack exchange. Instead of posting a question and looking for an answer, you'd post an answer to a problem you have solved. In addition to documenting it for yourself, there would be ways for people to tag/search/upvote/comment on solutions, follow people whose solutions were frequently useful, etc. Stack exchange itself was pretty new back then, so now the COUT might end up only being copy/pastes from stack exchange or AI slop. But a personal tech blog would scratch that itch for me with much less effort.
For non tech things, most of what I write these days is for tildes, so one thought I had would be to rework some of my "long" posts into blog posts. A lot of them are very personal, so I'll probably have to be more careful about identifying myself, and probably establish a different blog entity unrelated to my tech stuff.
I would write the kind of blog that's a private journal, filled with the most inane things in my life and my thoughts.
There's a thought that no films are bad films: in several decades the worst films will still give us historical insight into a past era via techniques, objects on screen and lighting etc.
The best blogs Ive read, as opposed to publishing level informational articles/ expert opinion essays, are those of my friends and past entries from myself. The past me of even a few years ago have mostly the same experiences, but can occupy different mental landscapes. Stranger's blogs self referencing past selves are also very greatly interesting to me.
So I probably couldn't answer for you in talking about a outward facing blog. The closest thing is probably your local discussion one: write about your local area and LINK to it from Reddit, don't let them have it.
Side question: what blogging platform should we use these days that would be cheap and not data farmed? If folks roll their own what's the easiest one? Assuming discoverability by strangers not a consideration.
Side side question: what if folks just use Tildes as a personal blog under ~talk
I would blog only when I have something to write about. I have different things to share but they come and go on very irregular basis.
So there is nothong that would make me blog weekly or even regularly in any time period.
I would also blog just for fun and to make my own archive of thoughts, solutions etc. If someone reads it maybe they would be amused, maybe they would think I'm crazy, maybe they would find something useful.
Every few years I think "I want to start a blog", but the kind of blogs I read are all quite samey and the space is saturated with people in my same demographic, so it feels pointless. Anything I'd have to say has been said a thousand times.
I have a blog that I'm sure no one reads. I don't post weekly though. In 2023, I posted once. Oops. Anyway, I write about games I play, homelab things, and once in awhile, just life stuff.
This year, however, I've already posted a handful of times this year. My goal is to write at least once a month. I think I've posted three times this month, due to the Tildes games backlog burner thing. So I'm ahead of the game!
While it is public and it's written for the public, in many ways, my blog is mainly for me. Especially the homelab posts. It's my way of recording and reminding myself of how I implemented a piece of hardware/software or how I fixed a problem I had. For the gaming-related posts, again, it's a record of what I've played or even completed.
I am sure very few people read my blog, but a few do and that is enough for me. My motivation for having one comes from what I like to read myself, which is other peoples opinions on science fiction short stories. I often search for other reviews and stumble upon similar blogs as my own. Occasionally I even get in contact with the author of a story I have written about, which make everything worthwhile. While I did enjoy the technical aspects of setting up a static site generator, I don't think I would bother if absolute no one read it.