I experienced the height of the blog, back when everyone had their own personal blog and some people were making a six-figure income from it. If someone went on a trip, they might create a blog to share pictures. People created blogs to document their baby growing up, or their home renovation progress, or whatever. At the time, blogs were really seen as a kind of personal diary, and when some people made fun of them they’d mock “people who publish their diary online for strangers.” Everyone online would read them.

Nowadays, blogs are still being created. But instead of being seen as a window into someone’s personal life, they’re instead seen as a tool to increase website visibility through SEO. Or, to raise someone’s profile as a “thought leader.” Is this what blogs should be for—just another marketing tool? A slightly out-of-date tool at that?

I think we lost something when we lost the blog. We lost the voice of real people sharing real opinions, often in a messy, non-linear way. This blog was created after the peak of the blogsphere, in 2011, and after that social media really took over. The things people created began to be hidden in these private networks owned by giant corporations, networks you had to create an account (and hand over your personal info) to see inside. Anything diary-like migrated over to Facebook, and after the scandals about the use of private information by social media companies, people have mostly stopped sharing personal information even there.

Platforms like Instagram and TikTok are not about keeping up with people’s lives, but about creating “content” for an audience to consume. Social media has drifted into becoming all about performance, and the reason behind the performance is to create a platform. And why create a platform? Ultimately, to make money off it.

There’s a reason kids nowadays want to be an influencer, or a YouTube star. These are seen as great opportunities for fame and money.

So yes, maybe it’s the internet as a whole that’s drifted into performance, away from authenticity and sharing for the joy of it. We know too well what will feed into the trends, and what will provoke an emotional reaction and capture engagement. We can’t turn back the clock and create stuff just for fun.

I think we lost something, and I also think we can’t recreate that early-ish internet again. But here’s what I think a blog can do, especially for anyone who cares about writing in some way. It can be more than a tool, to raise our profile. It can be a place where we rediscover the fun of sharing for fun again.

Create for the Sake of Creation

Blogs are not “art.” Most of my posts on this website are not quite up to the quality of my long-form, heavily researched, in-depth articles that I publish elsewhere. But I have the space here to explore fleeting ideas. I have the space to talk about things I haven’t fully formed an opinion on yet, and start a conversation where I hopefully can continue on the journey of forming an opinion. I can say, “I don’t know.”

When you write more formally, you need to have “point,” which often means you have to take a side and state an opinion. Blogs are also better if you have a “point,” but it’s freeing to be able to write without one if you like. You’re set free from having to be polemical, having to create engagement bait, having to demonstrate your allegiance to some tribe. You can just write. You can experiment and see if others connect with your experiments, and then build on that. You can just be passionate, even if you don’t quite know why you’re passionate about something. Which leads me into my next point.

Dive into Passion, and Be Human, Not AI

Blogs are a space to just be passionate. When I dive into a topic I’m interested in (and I tend to go down a lot of internet rabbit holes, it’s a bit of a habit of mine), I find that much of the best opinions are buried in blogs from ten years ago. Someone was on fire about a particular topic, and they really explored it. Not always neatly, like you would find in a textbook or an academic article. But with random detail that fascinates and makes something come alive.

If you want to use blogs to boost SEO, you can probably write blogs with AI (ChatGPT, etc.). Yes, Google says they penalize you if they detect it, so I wouldn’t recommend it… I’m just saying, the process of stringing words together in sentences that have meaning is becoming automated nowadays. It’s not that hard to generate paragraphs of text about some topic. Stringing words in a row is easy.

Sure, you might have to tweak it so you don’t get penalized for using AI, but overall you can speed up the process of blog creation if you really want. You can come up with a thousand ideas to share so you can present yourself as a thought leader (and after all, don’t most inspirational speakers repeat the same inspirational thoughts over and over?) The functions blogs are used for nowadays can somewhat be replicated by computers, and this will probably continue to get better.

But think about it. What do you do when you start to realize whatever you’re reading is written by AI?

That’s right, stop reading.

It’s the uncanny valley effect, the weird feeling where something looks human but not quite. When we want a human connection and we get a computer instead, it makes us feel kind of bad. Like we’re not worth the effort.

And what’s one thing a computer can’t do? That’s right, feel genuine passion and interest in a subject. Of course, it can try to fake it. I find ChatGPT loves to add exclamation points and a thousand adjectives to convey excitement. And it could get better at sounding enthusiastic. But it’s not going to go on deep dives that bring up irrelevant details that are still fascinating. It’s not going to rant about something in a way that makes you laugh. It’s just never going to feel passion.

And in a blog, you can embrace that passion. Especially if you write for interest, if you write because you love it, and not purely for SEO or to create a platform. A blog gives you a space to be unpolished (and AI tends to be quite polished). It gives you space to leave in the silly, stupid quirks that reveal you’re human. It gives you a space to be yourself.

Remember What’s Fun About Writing/Creating

The best thing about blogging is that it reminds you to just have fun. Write about the things you care about that you couldn’t really publish anywhere else. Write without the pressure of an enormous audience. Write when it’s fun—and if it’s no longer fun, stop writing.

A blog to me is that happy medium where you can write about WHATEVER catches your attention, but you still have to pay a little bit of attention to demonstrating to others why you’re interested in it. This makes it different from a personal diary—you are sending it out into the world and starting a conversation. But you’re not as as tied to format. You get freedom to play

On your blog, not every post needs to be earth-shattering. I write a ton about books, about writing, about finding my way in life, and I don’t know if any one post turned anyone’s life upside-down. But I enjoy writing about this stuff, and the joy gives me motivation to write more about things that go a little deeper. So blogging can put you in touch with the fun of writing without pressure again!

Ironically, today I’m about to attend a workshop about The Art of Blogging. I’m curious what their opinion on blogs will be. What about you—do you miss the old days of the blogosphere? Or perhaps you don’t remember those days and are curious about them (or maybe they just sound boring to you!) What will the future of the internet look like, and will there be space for real humans, and human creation? Or will everyone continue to pursue monetization at all costs? Let me know below!

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