Is Blogging Dead?

Long time no see. Er, read? Either/or, I suppose.

Nothin’ much my way. A little bit of persistent illness (and the mysteries that abound), a little bit of stress, a little bit of standard bein’-an-adult fare, a little bit of distance from the socials/tech, a little bit of self-doubt, a little (lotta) bit of work, and a little bit of—you guessed it—burn out. With, like, everything.

The world is fatiguing lately, right? My god, just hop on Twitter right now for a heavy serving of THE BLEAKEST trending news tags as the platform itself burns down faster than the planet.

Though with the blue bird crashing fast into the sun, is the blog, like, a *thing* again? I’ve noticed a ton of people coming back to our beloved, weird, glitchy Tumblr lately. Does that precede a return to the longer form medium we used to ingest pretty veraciously before our attention spans were diminished and divided? I dunno, man. I’d like to think so. Not just selfishly but because there is a notable vulnerability missing from our collective internet experience since blogging all but disappeared.

I used to really look forward to every post from my blog subscriptions whereas I can only think of a handful of genuine creators whose stories I look forward to on socials as they are now. 10 years ago, posts were slightly polished, of course, but not at all to the level we’ve reached since. The authenticity was always first. I mean, I’m still friends with people I met via the blogosphere, and I know it’s because of the truthfulness in their posts.

Or am I just too nostalgic and overly hopeful because yeah, blogging IS dead? We want everything short and fast these days. Anything longer than 280 characters or 60 seconds feels like a slog. Waiting hours, days, WEEKS for posts seems like years in binge culture. Is that all simply too hardwired in us now for blogging to ever feel appropriate and fun again? Frankly, that feels most likely to be the case. I do hope I'm wrong.

That feeling of loss is one of the reasons I’ve not prioritized this medium over the years. There is a sense of futility in doing so. It’s like writing an obit over and over when one would have done. But since deep down that diametrically opposes my belief blogging is something worth saving, I trudge on. Extremely sporadically, but on and on. Wait, are bloggers boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past? If so, there’s hope among my doubt… so let’s do this together.

Shall we?