Dying my hair on a random Sunday

When I was a kid, I have blonde curly hair but eventually it got to long. My mom loved my blonde hair, but she had to get it cut she didn’t know that my hair would completely change. The once blonde hair was now brown and straight, I grew up finding photos of my blonde hair on my mom’s facbook and was always sad that it wasn’t still curly. My hair was dark brown when wet and in the sun was a light brown, but it looked almost gray which I hated. Eventually I was sick of it and in a point in my life where change was big.

Freshman year of high school the year I was out as a gay man even though we all knew; and the year I started being myself. Being myself came with me exaggerating my personality to feel comfortable and hyper fixating on one person who I like to call a victim of me coming out which is a story for a different time. The second semester was when the big changes in my life happened like I started going out of my house and experimenting with new things some which I shouldn’t have like nicotine which I still miss to this day but one thing I did experiment with which I am happy for is dying my hair. I wanted to go darker but also needed the courage I hated making big changes because of the attention it brought even if it wasn’t bad. After getting the validation I needed from people I went to the store with my mom a bought the hair dye just a dark brown not to create a dramatic change. We got home and she poured the bottle of dye on my hair and rubbed it in not being gentle making small cuts in my head with her nails which caused burning from the chemicals. My head was on fire, and I hated it even though now I can ignore it because beauty is pain.

After months of dying my hair and people commenting on how it looks read when faded I decided I wanted to go even darker, so I went black. The black dye was a major change because it could either look good or I will look emo which does not match my vibe. Luckly the black looked good and people loved it but more importantly I loved it and kept dying it black repeatedly wanting to go darker which wasn’t even possible. It faded blue which I hated but was able to live with. I decided I wanted to grow it out sophomore year and failed the first time but stuck to it the second. After growing it out for months and it still not fully being gone after people’s comments about saying they could see it grown out. I have a coworker who every time she saw me, she would say I should dye it black again and looking back at my snapchat thirst trapes with the dark hair I decide to go back dark. Instead of going black I chose the darkest brown hoping to love it. My least favorite part of dying my hair is the waiting for it to be done having to sit straight up to not get die on anything and trying to pass time that’s why I’m writing this but now that my timer is going off I am going to go wash it out and hope for the best.

Thank you for reading my blabbering, and enjoy the website

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.