A Unicorn of Sorts
While reading a comment from a long-time reader of my blog earlier, it struck me that there are relatively few of us left. By “us”, I mean the bloggers of the old world – the ones that started it all. Werecord the most random thoughts, hopes, dreams, and daily miscellany for others to stumble upon. There used to be many more of us – we have become increasingly rare over the years.
We grew up with the “world wide web”. We remember Pyra Labs building a publishing thing for the internet, and calling it “Blogger”. We also remember a college kid called Matt forking the code of a little used PHP script called B2, and eventually renaming it “Wordpress”.
I remember reading the online journal of a girl that worked in downtown San Francisco – she was newly married andcontemplating moving from the city to start a family. We are still in touch to this day. She stopped writing some years ago now.
I remember reading about a girl living and working in Paris – who was then fired for describing a senior member of staff in somewhat comedic terms. She wrote the book, and was outed by the national press. Her brush with fame stopped her writing too.
There are so many people that I once followed that have either slipped slowly into the shadows, vanished overnight, or deliberately burned their online presence to the ground. As I said – only a few of us remain.
If you take a look at BlogLovin, Tumblr, the Wordpress Reader, or Medium, you would be fooled into thinking that “blogging” is alive and well. You will do well to find many personal journals among them any more. Bullet lists, niches, and recycled photos of fashion and food have decimated the candidlandscape I once knew.
It feels strange, being rare. Sometimes it feels like you’re the fool on the hill, spouting rubbish that nobody takes any notice of. Quite strangely, there is an odd comfort in knowing that you’re not following the crowd though – that you’re tilting at the herd’s windmills in your own quiet way.