Is blogging dead??
That is the question I was sat asking myself when I first thought of starting a blog. When you look up the word “blog” in google you get one of those stupid ai generated answers that you choose to ignore and scroll down you get websites for creating a blog, but you don’t get any actual blogs. But what exactly is a blog; the Mariam-Webster definition of a blog is, “a website that contains online personal reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks, videos, and photographs provided by the writer”. The information that comes from a blog is still shared to this day through other types of media but something about it isn’t the same.
The way we choose to share personal thoughts, projects, artwork, writing, and other information Is now all through short form media. A major problem with short form media is you’re not getting the whole picture; you’re getting a short dopamine that grabs your attention and losses it in seconds. This is a problem and I am saying as someone who has been taking in short form media my whole life starting with the vine compilations on YouTube then slowly metamorphosizing into TikTok where I often would feel this sense of addiction. From hours spent wasted on my phone watching TikTok so much so that even watching YouTube or a tv show felt productive or like I was accomplishing something. Now this essay isn’t about why short form media is a problem (which I will eventually get to writing one about that) but short form media is a major reason for the art of having a blog.
The concept of blogging originally stems from the 1990s weblogs during a time when not many people had access to the internet. Encyclopedia Britannica was the first weblog; but what we think of a blog today started around 1998 with people creating online diaries with anecdotes of their life. With internet being more accessible so did blogging by the early 2000s blogging started to gain traction. As blogging become accessible through the creation of blogging platforms like live journal, and blogger which is the platform I use for mine. Leaning into the mid 2000s blogging was on the up rise with the launch of MySpace a place where anyone could create a stand-alone blog. People were creating very niche blogs including fashion, television, fan groups, and many more; MySpace had up to 350,000 new users a day during its prime.
By 2010 MySpace started to see a major decline in popularity this is primary due to the uprise in twitter and Tumbler. Tumbler was the hot new way of blogging coming in the form of micro blogging. Tumbler was for curating the “perfect aesthetic” using images, text, and links to create the perfect look. There was everything from fan pages, photography, personal diaries, to different aesthetic like hipster, grunge, perfect pink, tropical, and many more. Tumbler was a place where everyone was welcomed and could find the people and things they were looking for. In modern media you can still find what you like but everyone is also seeing it making the content you like being able to reach the wrong side of the internet; this leads to hate and shame of what we fine interesting.
Tumbler reached 100 million active blogs by 2014 but unfortunately nothing is poplar for long and by 2016 there was a major decline in the popularity of tumbler. In 2016 there was a shift to video content with YouTube becoming very poplar and Musical.ly started being used by youtubers and their fans. After 2016 the blogs being made where less geared towards teens and more too adults. Blogs where being monetized a lot more and were a space for people to make money often with sharing recipes or life tips. Blogging is an art to share your creativity and your personality. A place to be yourself and show what you like in a fun way. Blogging is something that should be treasured and shared more often. The community and comfort it brought people isn’t something we see in today’s world. but why it that? it’s because we choose for it not to be we can create these communities, but we decide not to. So now ask yourself, “is blogging dead?” the answer is no it isn’t it just an art being lost but we can change that by choosing to create and share our creativity through the creation of a website instead of a short 15 second video that will be scrolled away from.