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Owning my own content

I really enjoy writing blog posts. I'm also one of those weirdos who likes writing documentation for my code. I like that it makes me think more than just superficially about a subject, like how a thing works or what my opinion on it is. If I'm going to put something in writing, I have to get it right, or at least makes it defensible. And that makes me put much more effort in to the writing, compared to a social network where content is essentially ephemeral, so quality matters much less.

So I'm trying to write more blog posts, longer posts, rather than just quickly sharing thoughts on social media. And I'm liking it.

But it's not just about writing blog posts any more. This year, I've started moving away from third party services where I can, and looking at what I can own for myself. And I really like where that process is going.

Owning the content

An important aspect of having a blog is the ownership it gives me over the stuff I produce online. I don't have any worries about changing social network, and having to migrate or export my posts. I don't worry about a service being taken over or sunsetted, and possibly losing everything. It all just lives here.

And I don't want to create content for other sites to advertise against any more either. Goodreads, Letterboxd, Twitter, Instagram, whatever else. I don't want to share those links around. I don't want to have various things living in random corners of the Internet. I want my "content" in my place. And a nice benefit of that is that nobody can get rich off of me by turning me into part of a content farm that doesn't pay its contributors but still aims for the kind of ad revenue that makes its founder a billionaire.

I want my personal site to be my source of truth. That way I can share a link wherever it's appropriate, and now I'm completely responsible for what's there. And perhaps one day I'll look at building some ActivityPub or micropub service, or integrate something like Webmentions, to embrace the Fediverse or IndieWeb and add a social layer. But what matters most to me isn't the social element, which is essentially the comments section of a blog. It's the content itself.

Owning the appearance

I love being able to style my site and my content however I want. And I'm well aware that the style is really basic at the moment. But I'm getting the opportunity to learn more about CSS, to improve the appearance and style things how I want them to look. I couldn't do that on Twitter or Letterboxd.

Owning my own projects

I love what I'm doing with my albums and books projects this year, tracking my listening and reading here. Over the years, I can build my own archive, like Last.fm and GoodReads but owned by me. Here. Rather than having some other network to contribute content to, and manage.

I can show as much content as I want, and completely control my own privacy too. I'm sharing what I want to, and don't have to worry about what else is being gathered.

And I can present the projects however I want. Make a library that covers all my favourite media, see challenges for a year, show how books and music relate to each other rather than being siloed. There are so many possibilities.

I've mentioned Instagram in this post already. I stopped posting to Instagram, in large part because I don't want to be part of that service's monetisation. But I do enjoy taking photos and sharing them, and while I don't have any photography here yet, I'm looking forward to one day working on a fun way to share them on my site, while learning about how to present them in HTML and CSS.

Owning my own vanity

I love not worrying about likes, retweets etc. I have no analytics on my blog at present. Maybe nobody reads it? That's fine! It's for me.

Blogs are dead, long live blogs

I don't remember when Google Reader was killed off. I vaguely remember the cries of the death of blogging and RSS, and the plethora of new services that launched to completely disprove those obituaries. Feedly. Feedbin. FeedWrangler. Etc etc. But by that point, a shift had happened for me which kind of justified Google's lack of interest in Reader.

Google Reader

I discovered Google Reader sometime around 2009, give or take a year or two. I was in uni, studying computer science, and I was just starting to really get into the tech news world. Engadget, TechCrunch, The Register, that sort of thing. I heard about Google Reader, and decided it sounded like a cool place to get my news from, rather than jumping between sites I had bookmarked.

Then I started seeing repeated mention of the same bloggers, like Gruber, Kottke, Marco. So I subscribed to them as well, and discovered how fun it was to follow individuals as well as bigger sites.

I checked in on Reader multiple times a day. Whenever I was at a computer, really. Combined with the advent of the iPhone, my personal switch to using the Mac, and the related rise of tech podcasting (👋 TWiT and 5by5), it all shares a very special place in the nostalgic part of my memory. It's when I really got into this corner of the Internet.

But over time, that Reader time moved to Twitter. I started using Twitter in 2009 as well, and what started as a bit of a social novelty eventually became a combination of social site and news source. After a few years, Twitter was where I found blogs to read, not Reader. And it had the added benefit of conversations happening in the same place, linking all these blogs and bloggers together with the readers.

Comments Off

It's funny that I liked the conversations on Twitter because I have always hated comments on blogs. It seemed like a place for trolls to go to start arguments. I felt like the noise of all that negativity spoiled anything good in the comments section. So I just ignored them.

Twitter fading

But on reflection, Twitter being a news source and social site is basically just the comments section of a site, with occasional reference to the main article. The comments are the main event there. And that was fun for a while. But it stopped being fun, and it's taken me a while to realise what was missing. The actual articles. In-depth thought, and replies on other people's blogs which had the same depth. Not hot takes and trolling that could all be spat out while sitting on the toilet.

Twitter's algorithm doesn't reward deep thought or considered nuance. It rewards opinions that will generate a reaction, and a negative reaction is much easier to achieve. So lots of negative sentiment gets rewarded, and that in turn makes it less enjoyable to be part of. Over there last few years, I've noticed lots of previously active Twitter users becoming less engaged, often blaming negativity, trolling, and worse.

And that's the Twitter that we had before it was bought. Lots of hot takes, lots of negativity being algorithmically rewarded. Far less civil conversation or nuanced thought.

Blogs are cool again

Then the changes happened at the end of last year, and that felt like the final straw for a lot of people. Lots of people stopped using Twitter, often moving to Mastodon but also reviving the old idea of blogging. I'm seeing so many more interesting blogs in my RSS feed now. And I'm more motivated to write too.

And I love it. It's so cool to read articles instead of tweets. Long may it continue.