meta

published: 2024.10.05
tagged: girlblogging
by mana

now playing – Magnetic (Starlight Remix) by illit

today, while I was discussing what I should write about for this week’s blog with a friend, I was reminded of around when I stopped having a blog, which would’ve been around 2006 or so, when twitter was first a thing.

for many years prior, beginning around 2000 or so? I had a livejournal account and that was my real entry into blogging. I remember spending hours customizing layouts to get everything perfect and making sure I had only the best 100x100 pixel icons to choose from for my posts.

anyway, it got me thinking about how modern social networking has kind of rendered the weblog obsolete? at least for the bulk of the public. I can’t remember the last time I regularly read any blogs or followed any bloggers…maybe as late as 2010-2012 or so? beauty bloggers have managed to remain relevant, blogging swatches of makeup hauls and reviews of products, so these were probably some of the last blogs I used to follow. Off the top of my head I can think of little porcelain princess (which says it has moved, but the redirect domain is dead D:), xiaxue who apparently no longer blogs, and bubzbeauty who seems to have rebranded to vlogging. There were others, for sure, but I don’t remember all of them because it’s been over 10 years since I last followed any blogs tbh.

I didn’t delete my livejournal until 2021 or so, well after it had been sold to a Russian media company and I had stopped blogging there. my last update I think was in 2012, when I had decided I would try keeping up with livejournal again, but it didn’t last. my last entry before that one I think was in 2008?

idk I just think it’s interesting to think about how the internet has changed over the years, beginning with personal websites for your average user (stuff like webshrines, webrings, etc.) and then eventually developing into blogs (which there were plenty of social networks that focused on this), which eventually progressed into short-form content like microblogging (twitter and now X, status.cafe, pleroma/akkoma, the ancient tusked creacher which shall remain unnamed) or at the very least more loosely-organized stream-of-consciousness-type blogging (like tumblr or misskey). I don’t think any one of these is inherently better than the other, and they all have strengths and weaknesses; it really just depends on the blogger’s/user’s needs - if you’re like me and you don’t have a ton of long, well-thought-out stuff to write, maybe shorter-form stuff is more for you?

idk, I’ve just been thinking about what sorts of things really warrant blog posts as opposed to their own subsection here, and I’m sure I’ll figure it out as I go but it’s a little overwhelming sometimes, thinking of all the freedom that comes with having your own webbed site!