I too have been throwing messages in bottles into a silent sea for a pretty long time, but I think I'm okay with that. It doesn't help if you also have difficulty adhering to quintessential blog SEO best practices.
1. Consistent theme - A diverse set of interests and a lethal dose of ADD make this virtually impossible
2. Consistent updates - My articles tend to be rather unusual, and I'll often combine them with customized interactive layouts. Even a monthly post would be pretty ambitious for me.
On a slightly related note, I'm hoping that zines [1] see a resurgence in popularity as I could see it being a good point of entry towards possibly gaining readership for those whose sites are inadvertently running in stealth mode.
Shameless plug as always when the topic comes up: submit your blog to https://indieblog.page to be discovered. subscribe to its RSS feed or mastodon account to discover indie blogs one random post at a time.
I gave up on reaching anyone. Now I blog for myself alone. My blog serves only 1 real purpose, which is to build and host my resume, but I enjoy writing anyways.
My website[1] will be hitting 25-years next year (2026 JUN 11). I stopped caring about comments, reactions, SEO, etc. for a while; I just post whatever I want these days.[2]
Of course, I like the fact that sites such as Adobe, Wikipedia, WordPress, IBM, the US Patent (mostly via Google), Russian and Chinese Websites, and quite a few other prominent websites maintains their links that points to some of my articles.
The main reason was to get back into the habit of writing, and by extension thinking. ChatGPT has weakened my thinking capacity.
> But then I stopped because I had no return from it.
> The main reason was to get back into the habit of writing, and by extension thinking. ChatGPT has weakened my thinking capacity.
I can definitely relate, and find this true as well. While a (monetary) return has never a big focus for me. It's still hard to keep going over time with motivations around self improvement, accountability, etc.
I have two niche blogs( civilwhiz.com and mes100.com). Those bot traffics increase my visitor count in Google analytics by more than 100%. It's super annoying when the analytics are distorted by bots traffic.
I've been getting Singapore traffic like crazy
I do hope indie blogging makes a comeback. When the only objective of the post is for the author to ‘scream into the void’, it’s refreshing in this day and age.
From personal experience I can tell you that they are coming back. And a lot of blogs never left. Granted, compared to how many people are on social media the number seems small but that’s ok imo.
I have been blogging for awhile. Not too concerned if it gets read. I post articles on hackernews if it's relevant to the tech crowd. My writing is really for me. And maybe my family will want to read it some day.
Fully agree. The brain is a muscle like any other, so atrophy is no different. I’ve started playing chess and a few other simple brain exercises.
In the past, you also used to ping a bunch of search engines (eg Technorati) for each new post. Going forward, you should be able to ping AIs but there should be a paywall before they can train on your content.
Also, how are AIs going to train for new languages and business rules in the future? People may start to get defensive. It must be worth something.. enter x402.
AIs are dumb - they can't really make sense of anything new without a human first to put it into context.. right? Remember that!
Most of my use for my blog posts is linking people to them on IRC and forums. I don't need or want search engine traffic. It's true there's no money or the churning waves of activity associated with that money in blogging anymore. And that's great. Social media siphoned off the profit chasers and all their running in place activity to stay on top of the eternal wave of now in recommendation engines.
What's the state of IRC these days? I've not kept up since the mid 00s and wonder where people have gone now.
I log on once in a while to a channel I used to use, and some of the same people are sorta still there. IRC is weird now, nostalgic but also... the things that made it truly fun aren't really a thing. Weird !fserves for warez, strange early chat bots, a/s/l... I do miss it. I think it has moved on except in little bubbles, and I cheer those on from afar.
Did I miss this magical time where every blogger was getting thousands of hits? Posting on the internet has always been screaming into the void.
I too have been throwing messages in bottles into a silent sea for a pretty long time, but I think I'm okay with that. It doesn't help if you also have difficulty adhering to quintessential blog SEO best practices.
1. Consistent theme - A diverse set of interests and a lethal dose of ADD make this virtually impossible
2. Consistent updates - My articles tend to be rather unusual, and I'll often combine them with customized interactive layouts. Even a monthly post would be pretty ambitious for me.
On a slightly related note, I'm hoping that zines [1] see a resurgence in popularity as I could see it being a good point of entry towards possibly gaining readership for those whose sites are inadvertently running in stealth mode.
[1] - Such as Paged Out (https://pagedout.institute)
Shameless plug as always when the topic comes up: submit your blog to https://indieblog.page to be discovered. subscribe to its RSS feed or mastodon account to discover indie blogs one random post at a time.
I gave up on reaching anyone. Now I blog for myself alone. My blog serves only 1 real purpose, which is to build and host my resume, but I enjoy writing anyways.
My website[1] will be hitting 25-years next year (2026 JUN 11). I stopped caring about comments, reactions, SEO, etc. for a while; I just post whatever I want these days.[2]
Of course, I like the fact that sites such as Adobe, Wikipedia, WordPress, IBM, the US Patent (mostly via Google), Russian and Chinese Websites, and quite a few other prominent websites maintains their links that points to some of my articles.
1. https://brajeshwar.com/
2. https://brajeshwar.com/2021/brajeshwar.com-2021/
You’d be an excellent guest for my pepleandblogs.com
I love having people with “old” blogs on to hear their stories. Thank you for writing for so long, I’ll definitely get in touch.
Their photos are worth reposting for the few who won't read past the first paragraph. This is cool.
https://mijnrealiteit.nl/
I second the sentiment expressed. I used to blog often and cross post on Medium and Twitter.
At peak, every third post I wrote went viral. But then I stopped because I had no return from it.
I recently started writing on my blog again: https://shivekkhurana.com
The main reason was to get back into the habit of writing, and by extension thinking. ChatGPT has weakened my thinking capacity.
> But then I stopped because I had no return from it. > The main reason was to get back into the habit of writing, and by extension thinking. ChatGPT has weakened my thinking capacity.
I can definitely relate, and find this true as well. While a (monetary) return has never a big focus for me. It's still hard to keep going over time with motivations around self improvement, accountability, etc.
Speaking about blogging, for those who run on WordPress at least, do you get lots of bot traffic from China and Singapore recently? They usually appear in pair. (https://support.google.com/analytics/thread/378622882/google...)
I have two niche blogs( civilwhiz.com and mes100.com). Those bot traffics increase my visitor count in Google analytics by more than 100%. It's super annoying when the analytics are distorted by bots traffic.
I've been getting Singapore traffic like crazy
I do hope indie blogging makes a comeback. When the only objective of the post is for the author to ‘scream into the void’, it’s refreshing in this day and age.
From personal experience I can tell you that they are coming back. And a lot of blogs never left. Granted, compared to how many people are on social media the number seems small but that’s ok imo.
I have been blogging for awhile. Not too concerned if it gets read. I post articles on hackernews if it's relevant to the tech crowd. My writing is really for me. And maybe my family will want to read it some day.
Shameless blog plug -
https://www.rxjourney.net/
How AI is making us Dumber.
Fully agree. The brain is a muscle like any other, so atrophy is no different. I’ve started playing chess and a few other simple brain exercises.
In the past, you also used to ping a bunch of search engines (eg Technorati) for each new post. Going forward, you should be able to ping AIs but there should be a paywall before they can train on your content.
Also, how are AIs going to train for new languages and business rules in the future? People may start to get defensive. It must be worth something.. enter x402.
AIs are dumb - they can't really make sense of anything new without a human first to put it into context.. right? Remember that!
Most of my use for my blog posts is linking people to them on IRC and forums. I don't need or want search engine traffic. It's true there's no money or the churning waves of activity associated with that money in blogging anymore. And that's great. Social media siphoned off the profit chasers and all their running in place activity to stay on top of the eternal wave of now in recommendation engines.
What's the state of IRC these days? I've not kept up since the mid 00s and wonder where people have gone now.
I log on once in a while to a channel I used to use, and some of the same people are sorta still there. IRC is weird now, nostalgic but also... the things that made it truly fun aren't really a thing. Weird !fserves for warez, strange early chat bots, a/s/l... I do miss it. I think it has moved on except in little bubbles, and I cheer those on from afar.
Did I miss this magical time where every blogger was getting thousands of hits? Posting on the internet has always been screaming into the void.