Is maintaining a personal blog still worth it?

For those still maintaining personal blogs: How do you find readers? Where do you share your content? And most importantly - why do you keep writing?

Is maintaining a personal blog still worth it?

As I said in On writing as an obligation,

A few days ago I realized something. I don’t like writing.

which results in a blog being a strange format for me. While I like the idea of writing insightful articles, and have plenty of ideas for topics, I hate the actual execution.

What I've been doing instead of blogging is building automated systems. Whenever I sit down to blog I inevitably end up writing code instead.

To simmer this down, the price of everything has kept increasing as wages stagnated. Simultaneously, businesses spent several years telling workers they were asking for too much and doing too little, telling people they were “quiet quitting” in 2022 (a grotesque term that means “doing the job you are paid to do”), and, a year later, insisting that years of remote work was actually bad because profits didn’t reach the unrealistic expectations set by the  post-lockdown boom of 2021. While the majority of people don't work remotely, from talking to the people I know outside of tech or business, there is a genuine sense that the media has allied itself with the bosses, and I imagine it's because of the many articles that literally call workers lazy.

Lost In The Future

Which leads, I think, to the other important function of Zuck’s new look. I think Roose is right that Zuck is “has clearly been studying Mr. Musk’s playbook”--not just in his rhetorical choices, but in his efforts to become more of a social-media main character in the same manner as Musk. (Note that Zuck is on Threads doing an uncanny imitation of Musk spamming single-emoji responses to Tweets thing.) For most of his career, Zuck has followed the general conventional wisdom around being a C.E.O. and attempted to appear generally nonpartisan (and when partisanship was unavoidable, to express it in the blandest ways possible). But Musk has, over the last few years, demonstrated that there are distinct advantages to aggressive and committed partisanship--specifically, the ability to command and direct swarms of protectors and apologists online.

Why is Mark Zuckerberg vice-signaling? - by Max Read

This year, that was reconnecting with 'unproductive' hobbies like guitar, reading fiction, playing board games and daydreaming in nature. Doing things and spending time with people who make me feel me. I hosted friends more, moved my body more, tried new things and built community.

Going with the seasons

I would love to see Zuckerberg actually lean into free expression on his platform while providing users with more robust audience controls and mass blocking features to ensure users can remain safe. Instagram and Threads could be thriving places for journalism and free and open dialogue about important topics and events, but significant changes would have to be made.

IG meme pages rejoice! - by Taylor Lorenz - User Mag

I assume proper right-wing users will start showing up on Bluesky soon because X is going to get very boring for them, very quickly. One of the ideas I’ve repeated the most often in Garbage Day over the years is my firm belief that conservative-only social networks don’t work in the long term. The online right, post-2014, is completely powered by cyberbullying and cruelty and without an easily accessible Other to torment, they either devolve into irrelevant spam or start fighting with each other. This is why Gab, Parler, and even Truth Social have never materialized into anything other than unofficial directories for the FBI of would-be domestic terrorists.

Right-wing social networks don't work

As long as number go up, they don't give a shit how it happens. If number goes up at the expense of future stability and it all crumbles? They either get a bail out, golden parachute payment, or short it before it implodes and ride off to do it again somewhere else.
Number going up? Give them a bonus.
Number go down? Give them a bonus.
Meanwhile, the employees are bent over and fucked.

https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/vapj8k/comment/ic4cb5s/

For years, I’ve watched the destruction of the services and the mechanisms that were responsible for allowing me to have a normal life, to thrive, to be able to speak with a voice that was truly mine. I’ve watched them burn, or worse, turned into abominable growth vehicles for men disconnected from society and humanity. I owe my life to an internet I've watched turned into multiple abuse factories worth multiple trillions of dollars and the people responsible get gladhandled and applauded.

Never Forgive Them

Case in point: former Gov. of Maryland Larry Hogan posted a long thread on X about how he “personally witnessed (and videoed) what appeared to be dozens of large drones in the sky above his residence.” It turns out what he was looking at was the star constellation Orion and the stars Sirius and Procyon.

TikTok is done for - by Taylor Lorenz - User Mag