Recently, I have been reflecting on my history with the web, especially personal blogs because it was how I started out creating things and sharing things about myself on the internet, and if social media killed personal blogs, because I was there when personal bloggers started moving to social media. Upon reflection, I ended up having very similar thoughts as this blog post, before I actually discovered this post.
I don’t think blogs ever died, as I still came across and even subscribed to RSS feeds of niche blogs even before discovering the personal web and coding my own website from scratch for the first time in 2022, but the rise of social media made personal blogs obscure, so I’m happy to see people on the personal web are bringing back personal blogs too, which motivated me to include a blog to my website.
Although I definitely go through phases of not updating (like right now) and moving domains a lot/starting over (thanks ADHD!), I’ve never stopped having a personal website/blog since I started in 1999.
I embraced social media wholeheartedly (I desperately miss Twitter!), but I still always felt it necessary to maintain a personal blog alongside that for some of the very reasons listed in this post.
I’m a chronic yapper. Having a space to talk at length about everything and nothing without threading was and still is important to me. I also like that it takes more effort for the sad folk of social media who will specifically search for a topic to fight someone over to go to a website and leave comments/send hatemail.
But also, you cannot decorate social media like you can your own website. Webweaving is my creative outlet. I wouldn’t give that up for anything!
I love that people are adding blogs to their sites!