[HN Gopher] Why I still blog after 15 years
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Why I still blog after 15 years
Author : lawn
Score : 456 points
Date : 2024-09-25 12:19 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.jonashietala.se)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.jonashietala.se)
| dijit wrote:
| Interesting points, and it's wonderful that we can use blogs for
| other purposes and that they can evolve over time.
|
| I think people get hung up on the tech stack of a blog, so while
| I appreciate the timeline, I think we put too much emphasis on
| that in general..
|
| Personally; have _one_ sole purpose for my blog: to turn the
| arguments you conclude in the shower into something productive.
|
| It's somewhat cathartic to write down in as many words as you
| want to, with as much time as you want to: the actual
| underpinning arguments of a stance you hold, with citations and
| alternative opinions considered.
|
| Writing a comment on HN is nice, but largely there's a time
| pressure, wait a day for a _good_ response and the conversation
| has concluded... or, make it too long and you lose your audience.
|
| A blog post allows you time to reflect, not be reactive, and to
| truly get your point across, and people are more likely to read
| it.
| Andrex wrote:
| Agreed on getting hung up on tech stack. On the other hand,
| it's a mostly-harmless way to try learning new tech, which is
| fun.
|
| I've bounced between almost a dozen different stacks and
| platforms and these days I've wound up back at WordPress (self-
| hosted).
|
| I do have an itch to start my own platform though, based on
| Haven.org. (I'd contribute but I'm not a Ruby dev!)
|
| Feels like I just go through phases. Gutenberg's been a little
| annoying to learn and WP always felt heavy for what I need, but
| it's also always offered whatever functionality when I need it.
| jmmv wrote:
| Nice presentation and nice recap!
|
| A couple of observations from the text that resonate with me:
|
| * "Blogging helps me become a better writer, which in turns helps
| me become a better developer." Yes. Writing is super-important as
| a developer, particularly in a corporate setting, because
| communicating ideas clearly is critical in convincing others and
| in showing your contributions. And to be a better writer, well,
| one has to write more and blogging helps with that!
|
| * "The posts have grown larger and more ambitious." I've noticed
| a similar change in my own blog, where posts have grown from
| frequent 300-word long posts to infrequent 3000-word long posts.
| Other platforms like Twitter have captured the space of short
| form writing and, more "importantly", consuming such content.
|
| In any case, my own recap at the 20-year mark from 3 months ago
| is here: https://jmmv.dev/2024/06/20-years-of-blogging.html ;-)
| pocketarc wrote:
| > Other platforms like Twitter have captured the space of short
| form writing
|
| Does this ever feel like a waste? Are there good thoughts,
| ideas, and quips you've written and shared, that were then
| essentially lost to time? Since those thoughts are not archived
| on your website, when (if ever) do you (or anyone else) ever
| get to see them again?
| jmmv wrote:
| I actually archive any sort of short-form writing that I
| think is valuable in my site :) In fact, I compose Twitter
| threads first as a regular post where each paragraph fits in
| a tweet, then copy/paste those onto Twitter, and then share
| the link to the "real" post at the end (to avoid my content
| being slurped into "thread reader" apps).
|
| But there are lots of short, one-off random-thought tweets
| that are not worth archiving other than for downloading a
| copy of your data from these services and saving it offline.
| namrog84 wrote:
| I remember talking with a dev and they had posted a tutorial
| or how to on a thing on twitter.
|
| It was nearly impossible to find. Search didn't work. No good
| direct link or easy way to find it.
|
| I ultimately spent 2 hours scrolling past (thanks infinite
| scroll nightmare) to several years ago to find it.
|
| There was no good way to jump to a given year
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Yes. That's why I have "microposts" on my blog's home-made
| SSG. I add an entry to a JSON5 file with the text, the RFC
| 3339 date, and a GUID (for permalinks) and it gets built into
| the site as a Tweet-like entry.
|
| This reduces the friction in sharing things, since building a
| whole new page takes a few minutes.
| criddell wrote:
| Do conversations you have throughout the day with people in
| your neighborhood feel like a waste?
| kstrauser wrote:
| If I know I'm going to like them later, I post them to my
| blog first and let it crosspost to Mastodon for me. If I post
| to Mastodon first and it catches more interest than I
| expected, I'll pull it back to my blog and maybe expand it
| into a bigger post.
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| I've kept a blog for almost 20 years now.
|
| I think author missed #8: I've personally benefited so much from
| the writings shared by others that it feels amiss to not share
| back things I've learned and little tips and tricks. One of my
| most viewed blog posts is a really short and simple one on
| simulating drag-and-drop of files with Playwright automation. I
| found no such information when I ran into this problem so the
| only logical thing to do was to share it for the next person that
| ran into this issue.
|
| I always encourage devs I mentor to write more and to share what
| they learn. For all of the reasons that the author listed, but
| also because it's a mechanism to give back to the community that
| all of us rely on whether we're writing code, making a recipe,
| doing a craft, learning a new hobby, etc.
|
| A lot of younger devs tell me "why would anyone want to read _my_
| writing " and I show them YouTube and how many different videos
| there are on how to make a pancake (and more are added every
| day!). There's a different audience for every voice and someone
| out there is looking for your voice. Everyone should make a habit
| to write in long form.
| kstrauser wrote:
| I never can tell what will resonate, either. My top posts
| getting traffic right now:
|
| - How to fix a Casper Glow Light charger
|
| - What I think about various email apps' privacy policies
|
| - How to put FreeDOS on a USB stick on a Mac
|
| Why those got popular is beyond me. I'm just glad someone else
| but me found them useful.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| Heh, similar sentiment... I just post things because I like
| having my own 'open notebook' that I can search easily, and
| the most popular post, by far, is about how to sync a shared
| Google Calendar with mac/iOS.
|
| I only had to do it once, but the process was so simple yet
| undocumented, I thought I'd post it on my blog.
|
| And now, for an entire decade, that post is basically
| Google's own documentation, since it's the top result for
| this common problem.
| Brajeshwar wrote:
| 20-years ago, I wrote about India's National Anthem - Jai
| Hind. I think because of a new video that was popular then.
| My blog is at the top on Google when searching for "jai hind
| lyrics". This shoots up really high, especially around
| India's independence day. I think more and more people these
| days need to look up the lyric to sing.
|
| Google keep reminding me that this is one of the best
| performing page visits. So, I have updated it to include more
| information that will be useful to those looking for it.
| l5870uoo9y wrote:
| I share many of the author's reasons for having a small and non-
| committal blog. I also think that one of the overriding reasons I
| have a blog is that I spend a lot of my waking hours reading
| (it's how I access and understand the world). Therefore, it only
| feels natural to want to write a text and become part of this
| writing (and reading) club.
| turoczy wrote:
| So glad to hear that there are other folks out there who continue
| to blog over long periods of time. It has the potential to create
| such an incredible resource, for the general public, for history,
| and for -- of course -- the writers themselves.
|
| I've written on various blogs, including my own, since the late
| 90s, but I have been blogging consistently on a single instance
| for a little over 17 years. I've seen my writing shift from long
| form to rapid fire and back again.
|
| I've also noticed that it's become mostly formulaic, as a way of
| dispersing information to folks. But it's those rare occasions
| where I'm actually struck with the inspiration to write a longer
| form thought piece that really brings me back to the whole reason
| I started my current blog.
|
| Again, super happy to read this piece and the comments here. I'll
| remain hopeful that it inspires others to start -- or to return
| to -- blogging. It's really an incredible means of communicating
| with one another.
| _bramses wrote:
| If your blog provider supports it, adding a "Open a Random Post"
| button on your blog makes the experience much more fulfilling in
| the long term, as you (and others) can revisit different posts
| from different eras. Websites don't have physical form that
| readers can navigate, so we can take advantage of that by adding
| serendipity manually.
| splitbrain wrote:
| First time I heard someone asking for that. But I do indeed
| have that for my own blog and love it:
| https://www.splitbrain.org/
|
| And if you're into random blog post, be sure to check out my
| project https://indieblog.page/
| dmitshur wrote:
| Thanks for making and sharing that project. A feature
| request, if I may: please consider adding support for
| https://www.jsonfeed.org/. Thank you.
| splitbrain wrote:
| I created a issue at
| https://github.com/splitbrain/blogrng/issues/3 but until
| its implemented maybe use something like
| https://fetchrss.com/json
| medstrom wrote:
| I got one too: https://edstrom.dev
| arjie wrote:
| I'm actually enjoying using MediaWiki as a blogging platform
| like this. It does have a random page
| https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/index.php/Special:Random but
| there's no guarantee it's going to be any good.
|
| To be honest, the OP has it right. I write this blog for the
| same reason I did decades ago: it's fun for its own reason. I
| used to have hundreds of hits back then. Now I think the only
| reader is me and my one friend with an RSS reader. But one day
| if discovered by an LLM, maybe it'll scoop me in and I'll be
| one bit of a machine intelligence :D
| helentoomik wrote:
| For my own personal, non-technical blog that I have kept going
| since 2006, I added an "on this day" feature that shows posts
| for today's date (or closest matching) for past years.
| Collapsed version shows posts from 1, 3, 5 and 10 years ago;
| expanded version shows all 18 years. It's like a little time
| machine that gives me little gifts of past posts.
| Brajeshwar wrote:
| I have had a blog since 2001 (wow! about to hit 25 years soon),
| while many of my peers have dropped off. Remember, this was the
| time when Wikipedia started. I've neglected it and have not taken
| care of it as much as I used to 10+ years ago. I did away with
| analytics about 5 years ago. WP-Engine grandfathered me while I
| was on WordPress, but I gave that up, too.
|
| Now, I write for myself, mostly to remember things that I can re-
| read later. And to have a URL on the web that I can give out with
| answers to topics that I have to answer repeatedly. I write plain
| text without any front-matter, or tags, as simple as it gets that
| GitHub Pages can spit out. If the basic CloudFlare analytics is
| to be believed, it continuous to be pretty well visited.
|
| But I like tinkering with it, and there are many unfinished
| articles. I think I will keep it for as long as I can.
| https://brajeshwar.com
| jgrahamc wrote:
| I guess I've been blogging on https://blog.jgc.org/ for 19 years
| now. I don't know where the time went. I keep doing it because I
| have new stuff to write about (from time to time). I suppose I'll
| keep doing it until I don't (have new stuff to write about).
| dancemethis wrote:
| I miss myself and my urge to write when I was thrilled by the
| concept in 2002.
|
| My original blog would be old enough to commit cr-- drive now.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > The Game Engine Trap.
|
| What _is_ that? I have a few theories.
|
| One is that the developer doesn't really _want_ to ultimately
| write a game.
|
| Creating the assets needed for a game, as an example, can be
| daunting. Implementing high scores, audio, saving game state....
| There is a lot of work to create a game beyond the rendering
| part.
|
| Or the developer is intimidated by the more qualitative nature of
| the "game part" of the game. The engine can be measured in FPS,
| etc. How do you measure how fun the game is?
|
| A recent approach I took was to write the game "firstmost" -- the
| game engine was a necessity to realizing that goal. FWIW, I used
| SDL to create a kind of sprite engine. The "engine" was bare-
| bones but allowed me to recreate a shareware game of mine for
| Steam.
|
| After the project was done I began a second (sprite-based) game
| by first moving over the same game engine code. But this new
| project required I extend the engine (there were new "feature
| requirements" unique to this new game).
|
| In this way the engine can evolve from project to project, but
| never becomes a _means to no end_.
|
| (And if you do it right, you ought to be able to pull the engine
| back into the original project with a minimal of refactoring.)
|
| Maybe I'm just suggesting something that everyone already knows.
| arethuza wrote:
| Isn't that a special case of the Inner-platform effect -
| writing an X is boring, so create a _platform_ for creating
| X-like applications. Of course, this can be repeated ad nauseam
| - to the level of "general-purpose tool-building factory
| factory factory"...
| probably_wrong wrote:
| I have a different theory. Making your own engine is a way to
| turn the enthusiasm I have _now_ into something productive
| _now_.
|
| If I want to make a character jump in Unity I need to
| familiarize myself with Assets, GameObjects, Cameras (don't
| forget the CamRotate component!), C#, Rigidbody and Colliders.
| My hunger for programming has turned into homework. But if I
| make my own engine I have more control between where I am,
| where I wanted to go, and what do I need to do in order to get
| there.
|
| It is also probably a waste of time as I'll solve over and over
| problems that the game engine has been refining for decades.
| But I definitely see the appeal.
| galleywest200 wrote:
| This is part of the reason I have so much fun with the Pico-8
| and now the official successor program Picotron.... You need
| to code right away!
| stonemetal12 wrote:
| >What is that?
|
| Your game needs sprites, so you could write code that loads the
| one graphics format you need at the 2 or 3 sizes you need.
| While doing that you decide it looks hacky so you add support
| for more formats, better scaling, ... suddenly you have gone
| from doing that one thing your game needs to something that
| supports everything every game on the planet might need but
| usually doesn't. By the time you have done that for every
| system in the game, you now have an "engine" but are burnt out
| on the project.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| At this point I admit I've never even made a useful game
| engine.
|
| I just make tech demos and libraries for odd stuff like loading
| 3D models
| MDJMediaLab wrote:
| I really enjoyed that post graph of theirs. I've shied away from
| battling with plain CSS over the years. I think it's a good time
| to finally lean into this weakness of mine.
| josefresco wrote:
| I _just_ started blogging again regularly after 15 years of
| neglect. It feels like it 's too late. While I do see traffic
| from Google, I often wonder if it's just not worth the effort. I
| will probably use it more like a journal, than any sort of
| commercial side hustle. I do enjoy writing with more of my
| personal style, knowing it will contrast against the AI drivel.
| hk1337 wrote:
| I am trying to get myself into doing it regularly.
|
| One of my main thoughts was documenting things I have found I had
| to do to with certain projects to get it the way I want, like
| homebrew packages I need to install and what to setup for if and
| when I wipe my computer and start fresh or get a new computer and
| want to set it up like I am used to.
|
| I have had many times I forget little things I had to do and end
| up going through the whole spiel of getting it to work correctly.
| dmitshur wrote:
| Coincidentally, I noticed my blog's first post1 is from September
| 24, 2009, so yesterday it became exactly 15 years old.
|
| I have taken great care to preserve all of the posts on my
| personal website, but unfortunately I don't write new posts very
| often lately. I wonder if that'll change.
|
| [1]: https://dmitri.shuralyov.com/blog/1
| breck wrote:
| Absolutely loved this.
|
| Things I love about your blog:
|
| - The fact that every post has links to the sourcecode!
|
| - Open source
|
| - No ads, no trackers, no popups
|
| - I can tell you use this all the time. So I know you strive to
| make your content as good as possible _for you_. Which is a
| strong signal that it will also be good _for me_.
|
| - I love the timeline (but wish they were done in a way that
| reflects scale, see user test video for more)
|
| Here's my user test:
| https://news.pub/?try=https://www.youtube.com/embed/UF7fjvE_...
| felideon wrote:
| > I worry that if I add statistics to the blog it'll change from
| an activity I perform for the activity's sake, to an exercise in
| hunting clicks where I write for others instead of for myself.
|
| If I ever finally find the motivation to start a blog, I think
| this is a key point. Vanity metrics would be demotivating.
| ozim wrote:
| That is how YT creators were getting burn outs they got hooked
| up on vanity metrics but then if one of your videos bombs you
| are hit quite badly so your metrics for following 10 videos is
| going to be bad. So they had to pump the content like crazy and
| there is no vacation time, because then your metrics also go
| down.
| jsheard wrote:
| For career YouTubers it's hard to blame them when those
| metrics are directly tied to their paycheck, which could
| easily fall below what they need to make a living if they
| don't pump the numbers enough. The system is practically
| designed to make them neurotic about making Number Go Up at
| any cost.
| aksss wrote:
| Letting the metrics steer the ship is a fool's errand in this
| kind of blogging, but I do find it an interesting novelty to
| see how people are getting to my stuff, search terms for
| organic visitors, etc. It doesn't drive what I write, but it's
| kind of neat to confirm that there are, in fact, a couple other
| people on the planet interested in the same things.
| ian_digital wrote:
| I recently did start a blog and I'm constantly fighting the who
| should I write for dynamic because of vanity metrics. Even if
| your blog has a specific focus or evolves like the original
| posters blog did, the stats are always staring you in face.
| Self-motivation seems to be the only way to counter this
| problem.
| codegeek wrote:
| "I keep this blog for me to write, not necessarily for others to
| read."
|
| This is the key to do anything over a long period of time but
| certainly applies to blogging. Nothing is better than intrinsic
| motivation and something you do for yourself. I have a blog that
| I try to keep up with. I fail to be consistent and one reason
| always has been me asking "Who should I write it for" instead of
| "What do I want to write about for myself". Something to take
| away here.
| ryandrake wrote:
| It's a spirit from the old Internet that we've all but lost.
| Replaced with the toxic "write for engagement" spirit that
| brought us SEO, blogspam, influencers, "YouTube Face"
| thumbnails, ragebait, and now AI slop.
|
| Same for writing and releasing open source software. Write
| software that you want to write and don't worry about how many
| users you have or how many pull requests you get or how many
| GitHub stars you have. These are empty vanity metrics, and
| another side of the same "write for engagement" coin.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| I think some of the blame has to do with how metrics and
| analytics started taking over every aspect of online culture
| (as is hinted at).
|
| I noticed I tried to optimize my blog more when I was using
| Google Analytics; that whole setup really pushes you to look
| at certain metrics like time on site, bounce rate, etc.
|
| The best decision I've made for blogging sanity a few years
| back was to switch to a simple self-hosted analytics solution
| that just focuses on total traffic and referrers, which is
| mostly helpful to see if a post hit some aggregator like HN
| or Reddit... but even that's fundamentally a vanity metric.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I think it is a huge mistake to use metrics, analytics, or
| any kind of quantified "audience measurement" to justify or
| rank a creative endeavor.
| unchar1 wrote:
| I also feel this with X/Twitter, where everything feels like
| a promotion for a course or a book or a new product. Posting
| things because they are fun to write is a lost art.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| > "I keep this blog for me to write, not necessarily for others
| to read."
|
| This is now to me the "old school" internet creator attitude
| (that I still possess). I don't blog as much any more but do
| create content elsewhere - a lot of it is for my own enjoyment
| and creative outlet, to blow off steam, whatever - the fact that
| other people may want to watch it is secondary. I do try to do
| things people want, but only if I want to do it.
|
| The only reason I highlight this is that the up and coming
| generations absolutely do not see content creation in the same
| way. I got in an absurd argument with an early 20 something on a
| social media platform about how annoying ads were that were
| disguised as content. The response was overwhelmingly "Well, how
| else do you expect content creators to make a living?"
|
| I do not disagree that creators should be able to monetize their
| content however they please, but the fact that people see that
| _as the end and only goal_ of content creation is baffling to me
| and almost certainly making it worse. This same person tried to
| tell me it 's been the same way since the earliest days of
| youtube - which they would have been in diapers around that time
| - is absolutely not true. The idea of content creation as a full
| time career is relatively new, and I hate it. The worst part is
| if you don't participate in the type of obnoxious engagement
| hacking or buried ads that these "professional" creators do, the
| algorithms punish you for it.
| Kye wrote:
| It's the flip side of every other employment possibility having
| such poor prospects. Do you spend 4 years getting a degree no
| one will hire for so you can bag groceries to pay off debt, or
| do you bag groceries to live while trying to break through as a
| creator?
|
| For most people, there aren't many options available. All the
| best opportunities are in cities no one can afford to live in
| anymore.
| jollyllama wrote:
| Still, it's surprising that they can't even conceive of doing
| anything without profit motive as an incentive. This isn't
| the first time I've heard of this kind of inter-generational
| dialogue. Perhaps Millennials and Gen-X are uniquely
| idealistic (or naive) generations.
| Kye wrote:
| Let's not confuse what they do for money with what they do
| for fun. For example: A lot of happy programmers can't
| conceive of doing it for fun: they log in, do a good job,
| log out, go tend to their sheep and work on their woodshed.
|
| You might not have the full picture of someone's life from
| a context-constrained conversation. There are things I'm
| good at that I tend to only want to do with a profit
| motive. I have plenty of unmonetized hobbies though.
| jollyllama wrote:
| > A lot of happy programmers can't conceive of doing it
| for fun
|
| I don't think that's true. I think even people who fit
| that description are aware of others who find it fun. I
| guess what I was saying is, it doesn't even occur to them
| that someone would do something absent any profit motive.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| The "Hawk Tuah" girl is a perfect example to me. She had a
| funny moment, and I think 15-20 years ago it probably would
| have just been a funny meme for a few years and a "oh
| you're that girl from the meme" at parties for her entire
| 20's. Like that's exactly how that would have played out.
| Now she quit her job, has sponsorships, got a major podcast
| deal - over a single viral moment. It's nutty to me,
| personally, but people seem to see this as perfectly
| normal.
| jollyllama wrote:
| Interesting point. I'm not sure what her plan for her
| life was, but I could understand her making that decision
| if the rather explicit nature of her comments precluded
| it. Maybe she felt she had no choice but to own it.
| doctorwho42 wrote:
| Anything to distract from the dystopia we live in.
| Ironically what you describe sounds like that season 1 of
| black mirror episode
| Kye wrote:
| 15 years ago "Shit My Dad Says" got a TV show. People
| have spun momentary stardom into book deals and gigs
| forever. NYC, Hollywood, all the music cities past and
| present, and the last couple of SV booms were built on
| trying to generate it. "You're good at that, you should
| sell it" has been a constant refrain to creatives with
| any level of skill for decades. Some people went for it.
|
| The scale changed, and that's meaningful, but some kinds
| of people have always been on the lookout for a path to
| fortune.
| jahewson wrote:
| That was pretty much the situation with reality TV twenty
| years ago. Everyone was aghast that some random person
| could appear on a show and instead of being cast aside
| for our amusement at the end, they were able to build a
| personal brand and get a career out of it. It's predators
| all the way down.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| I watched her podcast and some interviews, and it's clear
| that, while not the most educated person, she exudes
| charisma and has a relatable sense of humor. She seems
| like a natural entertainer.
|
| As for education, she's from the south and her mom is an
| absent drug addict so I give her a pass (I have the same
| background and it is extraordinarily difficult)
|
| I think she's a special case, and she'll prove that over
| time. I'm happy someone in her position got a chance to
| share her personality with the world. Wishing her the
| best.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| I'm not saying there's anything wrong with what she did
| or that she does not have talent. It's more crazy to me
| that this is seen as a natural progression of someone's
| online career.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| I don't know, I feel it's hard to know what a natural
| progression in one's online career looks like, given the
| relative nascence of the medium. Film underwent similar
| phase transitions over time before settling on the star
| system, which we are now seeing begin to fail as well.
|
| It's certainly not sustainable to give a podcast to every
| person who says something that goes viral on TikTok, so I
| wonder how things will look in another 30 years.
| DowagerDave wrote:
| The part I don't like is an entire army of people now
| think doing exactly the same thing is a viable strategy
| to similar success. We should view this as a lottery win,
| not career development
| jmb99 wrote:
| >Still, it's surprising that they can't even conceive of
| doing anything without profit motive as an incentive.
|
| Realistically, what percentage of the workforce in any
| field would continue working if they stopped getting paid
| (or took a 75% pay cut)? 1%? 0.1%? The reason people work
| is to make money that they can spend on the things they
| need to live, and hopefully have some left over for the
| things they enjoy.
|
| I love programming, building hardware, tinkering, etc in my
| spare time (as one of my hobbies), and I'm employed as an
| embedded engineer. I like my work. If my company stopped
| paying me, I would be looking for a new job immediately.
| Does that mean I don't enjoy my work? No, I just have this
| job to make money so that I can afford to live and do all
| of the things I enjoy.
|
| I would argue that yes, people who believe people should
| enjoy their work without a "profit motive" are naive, or at
| least sufficiently wealthy to forget what it's like to rely
| on income from employment.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I always struggle to understand this sentiment. There seems
| to be a huge labor shortage, particularly for physical and
| skilled labor.
|
| Auto mechanics change 120/hr for labor, someone recently
| quoted me 40k to spend a week landscaping my residential back
| yard, and an arborist wanted 3k for a single day of chainsaw
| work pruning a big tree.
| DowagerDave wrote:
| none of those things are accessible to someone who has say,
| a 4-yr fine arts degree. They're also extremes and not
| typical, unless your car is at the dealer, your backyard is
| on a make-over show, or that tree is hanging over your
| house & powerlines
| Kye wrote:
| Yep. Once you have any level of education past high
| school, lots of the better jobs just won't hire you. They
| assume you're biding your time until a better job comes
| by and any time or money spent training you will be
| wasted.
|
| The "labor shortage" is a fantasy created by people with
| jobs to offer having unrealistic expectations.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Surely someone with a college degree that wants to be a
| plumber can simply not disclose their degree?
| Kye wrote:
| Oh, they'll know.
|
| All that book learnin' changes you. With life and
| experience and life experience, you can stop coming off
| as a stuck-up out of touch asshole to people doing this
| kind of work.
|
| My entire generation got endless refrains of the message
| that these are the kinds of jobs you fail into if you
| don't get a degree. That doesn't break easily. It seems
| like the next crowd gets similar messages.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| If I understand you, maybe that is another psycological
| bottleneck on the side of workers. Hopefully time will
| change the perception and people will realize that a
| plumber making 200/hr isn't a failure, and has advantages
| over being unemployed with a 4 year art degree and 200k
| debt.
| Kye wrote:
| You've severely misunderstood. No, the problem here is
| the person with the jobs to offer who is overly picky
| about beginner attitude, won't hire anyone, then goes on
| Facebook and yells "no one wants to work anymore!"
|
| The person with the degree understands they messed up
| after years of job hunting and would be happy for the
| normal working gig, but it's not on offer to them.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Seems like from what you described, the main challenge is
| reliance on entrenched businesses are gatekeeping the
| entry knowledge and training.
|
| I wonder if trade schools would be a good way to bypass
| this bottle neck.
|
| I suppose you would still have the problem of people
| selecting the low ROI degree instead of trade schools,
| but they would still have the option after they
| understand "they messed up".
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I guess my fundamental question is why arent these jobs
| accessible? They dont reqire any degree at all, so it
| seems like they should be open to both the 4 year art
| graduate and a high school graduate.
|
| I live in a high cost of living area, but these are
| typical prices here. Call 10 autoshops and thats the
| typical rate. Even people on yelp operating out of their
| house arent much cheaper. Heck, residential plumbers
| charge $150-200/hr.
|
| So what is the bottleneck? Is it regulatory barriers to
| opening businesses? Is it a lack of knowledge? Is it poor
| discovery in the information age? Unions?
|
| It seems like there are lots of people making great money
| doing these things, and lots of people looking for work.
| Kye wrote:
| I'm not sure how you imagine the process of getting into
| one of these no-degree businesses goes. You don't just
| "start doing it." First, you need tools and
| transportation. Then you need to know what the hell
| you're doing. Then, probably, some certifications. And
| now you have to find people to pay you in a highly
| competitive market full of scammers who make it even
| harder to sell services.
|
| The usual path is to work for someone else until you have
| the skills and tools and certs to strike out on your own.
| That someone is not going to hire you if it looks like
| you won't stick around as soon as a better option comes
| along. And no bank will give a startup loan to someone
| who's never done it before.
|
| People make great money doing these things because
| they've done all this for years and built up the tools
| and skills and certifications and referral network to
| make it. You don't _start_ charging $200 /hour any more
| than you start out in SV making $1m/year.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| so now we are starting to get somewhere. It seems you
| think the bottlenecks are similar to the ones I flagged
| such as knowledge, discovery and certification.
|
| If you know a way to find the people starting that aren't
| charging 200/hr, please let me know because I want to
| hire them.
| HappMacDonald wrote:
| You can always try putting out an ad on Craigslist: "Need
| someone to fix my car (or landscape your yard or prune
| your tree, whichever thing you're trying to get done) for
| $X/hr. No experience or certification or warranty of any
| kind required, if you get hurt I guess I'm paying your
| medical bills, if you've never done this before now's
| your chance to muddle through and find out how on my
| dime, and if you ruin my property well then it sucks to
| be me."
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| What point are you trying to make in relation to the cost
| of labor and barriers to entry?
|
| You might have a point that everyone is so rich these
| days that they are willing to pay $200 an hour for a
| reputable plumber to unclog their toilet rather than take
| the risk it with a $50 plumber without 500 yelp reviews.
|
| This would certainly explain the trouble young people
| seem to be having starting plumbing businesses and
| introducing some well needed competition.
|
| I think this would fall under the discovery or
| triangulation problem.
| HappMacDonald wrote:
| What point are you trying to make by saying "send anyone
| who will bill me less than $200/hr my way"?
|
| Literally zero people are stopping you from trading
| arbitrary sums of money to arbitrary people with zero
| experience and convincing them to wield a power tool at
| whatever problem you have with your property.
|
| Yes, you need to find people willing to try. Yes, some of
| those people might see liability problems or find the
| entire arrangement sketchy and wonder what con you're
| trying to pull on them.
|
| But I guarantee if you keep looking you'll find somebody
| with lower critical thinking skills who is game for
| whatever you suggest and could use $X/hr for whatever X
| is greater than minimum wage that you specify.
|
| Depending on the state or country you live in and the
| task you want performed, it might be illegal for them to
| do the job without a license (plumbing comes to mind),
| but at least some of the job types you talked about do
| not strictly require licensing to perform publicly
| anywhere that I am aware of.
|
| Mostly I guess I am trying to uncover what your unspoken
| expectations are about the unskilled labor you are after.
| _Most_ people give a damn about what happens if they pay
| somebody to improve their property in some fashion and
| they ruin it instead. That 's what insurance and bonding
| is for. _Most_ people don 't want to be on the hook for
| hundreds of thousands in medical bills if an uninsured
| worker injures themselves on your land.
|
| Insurance, workman's comp, bonding, licensing, and trade
| school education all cost money that normally contributes
| to the $120-$200/hr rates you're talking about. These are
| also "only on the clock for the few hours some client
| needs something" rates for the person in question and not
| "guaranteed 40 hours a week working on an employer's
| schedule" rates, so should not be compared directly
| against the hourly rate of an office worker.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| If that's all you're trying to point out, then I agree
| and think that goes without saying. I'm not denigrating
| skilled labor. I think more people should go into it
| because it's a lucrative and high demand career.
|
| In addition to what you said, it is also true that the
| cost of skilled labor is quite high relative to historic
| benchmarks.
|
| Kye seems to think that smart and hard-working young
| people can't enter these fields due to various barriers,
| and I want to explore what those barriers are.
|
| Do you have any thoughts to bring on the topic. Kye seems
| to think established companies are limiting training to
| drive up prices.
|
| I tend to agree, but think there is more. I agree because
| my wife tried to break into being an electrician union
| because it starts at 100k salary per year, but ran into
| issues with limited spots used to drive up prices
|
| I'm more inclined to think it is discovery is a big part
| of the problem for people trying to start small business.
| If you aren't a national chain or in the first 2 pages of
| yelp, you will have trouble finding customers, even if
| you are smart and talented.
|
| Do you have anything to add in good faith?
| bongodongobob wrote:
| You bag groceries and spend your time looking to break
| through in the industry your degree is in. You are infinitely
| more likely to be successful finding a real job than wasting
| your time and energy hoping to win the influencer lottery. If
| you wanted to be a content creator what the hell did you get
| a degree for?
| xhrpost wrote:
| Agreed. I think part of this shift came with the transition to
| use real names online everywhere. Now what you put out there
| really matters because you might be judged for it years later.
| So if you're limited in your creativity, why bother creating
| something you don't enjoy if it doesn't have the potential to
| make you money?
|
| Personally I'm keeping my real name Gmail but I've created a
| no-name account on Proton and am starting to use that for
| certain platforms. I want to try and get back to something like
| the days of creating random logos in Gimp and posting them to
| my Geocities page that no one viewed other than a friend or two
| and I didn't care.
| ReleaseCandidat wrote:
| > content creation
|
| I seriously hate the term "content" used for "creative output".
| It is a terrible, derogatory word, that makes me sad. Content
| is only there to have something to sell, to fill the blank
| space around ads, the actual content of the content doesn't
| matter. That people refer to themselves as "content creators"
| is a sign that they see the value of their creative output only
| to make money.
| doctorwho42 wrote:
| Welcome to the hyper capitalist world that has been created
| over the past 60 years. This is the result of always needed
| growth in your economic system.
| anthonypasq wrote:
| this seems like a complete non-sequitur to me
| giardini wrote:
| But now you've added a _sequitur_!
|
| (It's OK to leave a thread dangling in the wind.)
| alexyz12 wrote:
| seems very relevant to me. Isn't it capitalism that
| reduces our value to $s? And thus our art is only
| valuable as content?
| shafoshaf wrote:
| I think this is a common misconception of the comparison
| between "capitalism" and other forms of economic
| distribution. It's not capitalism that equates everything
| to dollars, it is how the universe works. This was the
| beauty of Karl Marx's thinking. He postulated that the
| best way to measure value is in the amount of human labor
| that goes into the output. However, once you have a
| medium to equate the value of a new chair into labor then
| I can come up with an another transformation to equate
| that labor into some defined quantity of glass beads. It
| turns out that choosing Labor as the "value" is
| completely arbitrary, and so dollars (or yen or gold)
| works just as well as a medium for conversion.
| MassPikeMike wrote:
| Choosing labor as the value is worse than arbitrary,
| because labor is far less fungible than (say)
| commodities. The value of labor depends on whose labor it
| is for the job. Half an hour's labor by one person can
| turn apples, flour, butter, and sugar into a delicious
| pie; half an hour's labor by a different person will
| create a soggy mess. In one case, labor adds value; in
| another case, it destroys value (can't use that flour for
| anything else now.)
| funcDropShadow wrote:
| > This was the beauty of Karl Marx's thinking. He
| postulated that the best way to measure value is in the
| amount of human labor that goes into the output.
|
| This is indeed the most beautiful insight of Karl Marx
| that I ever read. This predicts perfectly why all
| socialist/communist economies collapse. They value
| inefficiency. The more work is needed to build a product,
| the more valuable it is --- according to Marx. That is
| one of the most fundamental error in his theories.
| rakoo wrote:
| You're assuming socialist/communist economies must, for
| some reason, be run exactly the same as capitalist
| economies. Of course if you're trying to mix both it will
| collapse.
|
| The point of Marx isn't that we should create markets
| where the value is decided by the amount of labor. The
| point of Marx is that if Labor creates value, then Labor
| should be in charge. The problem being that Labor is
| hard, so the end goal cannot be to maximize Labor (or
| value), contrary to your implied way of thinking were the
| most value must be created.
| funcDropShadow wrote:
| If maximizing value is not the goal, then why should
| Marxism redefine value in a counter-intuitive way?
|
| Btw, "Labor" cannot be in charge, outside the UK at
| least, because Labor is an abstract concept. In Marxist
| societies people are in charge that pretend to have the
| laborers best interest in their hearts. But as they "Some
| are more equal than others."
| daedrdev wrote:
| Somehow the increased accessibility of being an independent
| entertainer instead of having to work in a toxic
| entertainment industry that regularly covered up widespread
| abuse means that capitalism bad.
| cloverich wrote:
| Can you elaborate on your selection of 60 for the inception
| point?
| 8bitsrule wrote:
| That's about the time teen magazines emerged, isn't it.
| And the subsequent explosion of trends and rumors mags.
| golergka wrote:
| Economic growth is another way of saying "improving
| people's lives". An economic system which always needs to
| improve people's lives is a good thing, actually.
|
| When you compare modern first world to 60 years ago,
| people's lives have significantly improved. And if you do
| the same in developed countries, the difference is
| unbelievable.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Problem is the 10-20 year window doesn't look so good.
|
| Only vampires don't realize you can't suck every last
| drop out out. Every good manager knows you can't count on
| more than 80% employee utilization in the best
| circumstances with the best people. Now companies expect
| zero hour employees (part time employees who are
| guaranteed zero hours/zero schedule but expected to move
| their lives around their job, which is one of three part
| time jobs they need to survive) to do more than that by
| requiring employees do the manager's job of finding shift
| coverage off hours using their personal phone, etc while
| also being 100% utilized during work hours, with zero
| overlapping roll coverage. That isn't sustainable and no
| way live, and is an unreasonable expectation from a zero
| hour job.
| golergka wrote:
| It seems to me that you're equating economic growth with
| "sucking every last drop out". Please correct me if I
| misunderstood you, but it is a completely nonsensical
| proposition.
| mellavora wrote:
| The promise of capitalism is to improve people's
| circumstances and thus make them happy.
|
| The promise of buddhism is to make people happy
| regardless of circumstances.
| golergka wrote:
| And the promise of communism is to make everyone equally
| miserable. I was born in USSR and still remember 5-hour
| queues for rotting cabbage, thanks.
| red1reaper wrote:
| The promise of communism is that the worker owns the
| means of production, the worker, not the goverment. If
| the goverment owns your means of production, it's just a
| corpo disguissed as a country.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > When you compare modern first world to 60 years ago,
| people's lives have significantly improved.
|
| I disagree that most people's lives have "significantly
| improved" compared with the 1960s. We have more things,
| but I don't think that our lives are that much better, or
| even better at all. In the 1950s and 60s most families
| could get by with a one income household -- try that
| today.
|
| Even medically - on the one hand our physical health has
| improved through advances in medicine and life expectancy
| has increased considerably (mostly due to vaccines). On
| the other hand we have a huge increase in mental health
| problems. Per-capita suicide rates in the US are higher
| today than they were in the 1960s.
|
| (If you're in the top 10% then yes your life has
| "significantly improved". If you're in the bottom 50%
| then probably not.)
| shiroiushi wrote:
| >I disagree that most people's lives have "significantly
| improved" compared with the 1960s.
|
| Obviously, you're only looking inside the US. People's
| lives in the US haven't improved by that much because the
| US has been squandering its advantages for the last
| several decades. Outside the US, especially in developing
| nations, people's lives are far, far better than their
| parents' and grandparents'.
|
| >In the 1950s and 60s most families could get by with a
| one income household
|
| Only in the US, because of its post-war economic boom. In
| most other places, everyone had to work.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Yes, all fair points. I was of course referring to the
| US.
|
| But comparing Europe today with the 60s isn't a fair
| comparison considering the entire continent was
| devastated -- physically and economically -- during WW2
| and it was a long road to rebuilding. Same with Japan.
|
| > especially in developing nations
|
| That much I agree with, but the original post was talking
| about developed countries (US/Europe/Japan primarily)
| SamPatt wrote:
| >I disagree that most people's lives have "significantly
| improved" compared with the 1960s. We have more things,
| but I don't think that our lives are that much better, or
| even better at all. In the 1950s and 60s most families
| could get by with a one income household -- try that
| today.
|
| This impression is contradicted by a mountain of data.
| Ourworldindata.org is a good place to start.
|
| Anecdotally, when I talk to elderly people, they nearly
| all agree that they've witnessed substantial improvements
| in living standards. They're not always keen on the
| cultural changes, but they nearly always view modern
| living as "better off."
| jl6 wrote:
| Nobody ever thought to themselves: I sure could go for some
| content right now.
| wisemang wrote:
| Heh, my brother-in-law have described "content" as being
| the "love language" of our boomer dads.. the sharing of
| material (surprisingly often on TikTok these days) that
| none of us really care about yet continually gets sent out
| to us. Seemingly the favoured way to keep in touch.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Not a boomer but honestly every year that passes I can
| tell my cognitive decline by how much harder it is to not
| send these things to my kids.
|
| I have a folder full of them marked 'inheritance' so that
| I can be assured my kids will find it when they scour my
| computer after I'm dead. They are going to be so stoked!
| Dansvidania wrote:
| As someone that is on the receiving end of such a content
| feed, I thank you for your attempt not to send things.
| codetrotter wrote:
| Have you considered opening a high interest account for
| the inheritance?
|
| Inflation is a sad fact of life.
|
| A funny picture that would get a heartfelt laugh out of
| most anyone this year, could be eliciting as little as a
| sensible chuckle 30 years from now!
|
| That's why it's important to not just shove all your
| memes onto some USB drive and sticking it in the
| mattress. Think wisely, let the Meme Bank be the
| custodian of all your funny pictures and videos.
|
| Just by looking at a period of 10 years back compared to
| now, we can see a stark difference between the meme
| collections that families kept at home vs the meme
| collections of families that kept their memes in Meme
| Bank.
|
| There are two factors that contribute by an outsized
| amount to the lowering of value of the meme collections
| of average Joe over the years:
|
| Firstly, resolution and compression artifacts. Where ten
| years ago a 640 by 480 pixels jpeg would have garnered
| applause from the people you showed it to, the people of
| today expect more. And all you'd be getting today for
| that once glorious meme, would be responses asking you
| "y'all got any more of them pixels?"
|
| Secondly, stale pop-cultural reference. That meme you've
| got referencing a scene from a movie from last year.
| Yeah, it might still be funny today. In thirty years,
| usually not so much.
|
| Here at Meme Bank, we take care of these things and
| that's how we're able to keep your meme collection as
| funny as ever.
|
| "But...", I hear you say, "these memes hold sentimental
| value to me, and they are reflective of my kind of humor
| and of my personality."
|
| Believe you me when I say, we know that and we respect
| that. That is why our Meme Experts here at Meme Bank work
| tightly with our customers to ensure that your meme
| collections remain true to your individuality.
|
| So don't hesitate, call us today at 555-MEME. That's
| 555-MEME.
| bityard wrote:
| I can't explain why, but I always cringe a little when I
| hear someone say that they "consume content."
|
| Maybe its because I can't tell if brings up animalistic
| connotations (a pack of feral hipsters picking at the
| remains of an endangered podcast on the Serengeti), or if
| they are intentionally being elitist ("It would be a waste
| of time to simply read Chomsky's work, an educated person
| would make the effort consume it.")
| nemomarx wrote:
| I get the opposite vibe - you read literature, you
| consume content like it's generic slop and the quality
| isn't that important.
| codetrotter wrote:
| Agreed. It's like fast food, but for your brain.
| guy234 wrote:
| Fast food should not be consumed.
| Sammi wrote:
| Except on Fridays.
| Retric wrote:
| Fast food isn't inherently bad.
|
| What most consumers want doesn't align with what is
| healthy to eat. You could get water and a decent salad
| from chick-fil-a, but when nobody buys the health options
| they eventually get taken off the menu.
| Boxxed wrote:
| A friend of mine was playing the game Slay the Spire and
| was loving it -- he said something along the lines of,
| "It's very well designed, and there's so much content!"
| That always kind of skeeved me out. I think because
| there's this odd self-awareness of it all?
| bunderbunder wrote:
| Ha. This is is exactly what turns me off of Slay the
| Spire. It's a filler game, full of filler content,
| designed to fill your time. And not, as far as I can
| tell, much more than that.
|
| "Content" is a commodity. I don't see a huge difference
| between the folks who view creative work as "content" and
| talk about it as if it's fungible and can be valued per
| uni of weight, and art speculators who buy up works of
| art they've never seen and then leave it warehoused in
| some freehold somewhere.
|
| I can't really blame people who do creative work for
| catering to folks who think about their work this way -
| everybody's got to eat - but I'll still gladly bemoan the
| pervasive cultural debasement.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| Couldn't really disagree more, although I guess I see
| where you're coming from. Slay the Spire to me lacks
| "content" at least the way you're using it - there are 4
| classes that essentially have never changed and the
| levels are pseudo randomly generated and otherwise don't
| change much run to run.
|
| However, attaining very high levels in that game requires
| a depth of skill, strategy, and math that is constantly
| startling to me, and I used to play card games
| professionally.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| I don't even like deck builders and STS hooked me for
| solid 30hrs
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| This is exactly why my 12 yr old by likes Genshin Impact
| (a Zelda type game on the phone): "it always got these
| new characters" etc. Like infinite scrolling, it's an
| endless loop to get more gems so you can level up so you
| can get more new characters as they come up so you can
| get more gems so you can level up ad infinitum. It's
| basically like an advanced candy crush that you can just
| zone out and mindlessly do forever. I hate it.
| 7speter wrote:
| I think your comment kinda provides the reason why the term
| "content" is used; there are so many verticals out there
| that its just easiest to say "I'm a content creator." From
| there, if the audience remains captive, you can explain
| that you make videos about sewing sweaters with embedded
| controllers for cats.
|
| Also, don't get me wrong, I'm pretty conflicted on the
| term. I just like to believe people are using it in good
| faith when they describe themselves, and don't just see
| "content" as a means towards an end.
| jl6 wrote:
| It makes perfect sense to use the word content where it's
| a convenient abstraction. But humans don't
| watch/read/play or fall in love with abstractions. The
| specifics matter.
| immibis wrote:
| Not to the investor.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| You are not a gadget. Your life is not a vertical.
| 7speter wrote:
| Where did I say anyone is a vertical?
| red1reaper wrote:
| Sometimes I wish I was a gadget, then my life would be
| soo much easier.
| shiroiushi wrote:
| I really hate the use of the word "consume" much more
| than the word "content" in this context.
| sivers wrote:
| I know my up-vote of this comment is supposed to be enough,
| but I just have to add, as an extra praise @jl6 here:
|
| That's the funniest sentence I've heard in a long time.
|
| "Nobody ever thought to themselves: I sure could go for
| some content right now."
|
| Love it love it love it.
| stavros wrote:
| Agreed, that sentence really satisfied my appetite for
| content.
| mindcrime wrote:
| This entire thread is some of the best content I've
| consumed in a while!
| AlienRobot wrote:
| They didn't use to, but now they do.
| wormius wrote:
| I remember in the 90s "content is king" was a catchphrase,
| this was before the modern internet. Though I had no idea
| it was a Bill Gates phrase, found this while looking for
| more info on it (since it's been ages since I've thought
| that way, after the post 2007/2011-ish shift of the
| internet).
|
| https://medium.com/@HeathEvans/content-is-king-essay-by-
| bill...
| jodrellblank wrote:
| Loads of people think "it's film night" or "I want to watch
| a film" and then "what shall I watch?"
|
| The same with music: "I'll put some music on ... what
| should I put on?"
|
| And with food: "I want to eat something, what shall I eat?"
|
| People turn the radio on while driving, or the TV on in the
| background, for 'company' without caring what's on it.
|
| People pick up something - anything - to read while on the
| toilet, not caring if it's literature, magazine, or the
| ingredients of the shampoo bottle.
|
| The desirable feature is entertainment, distraction,
| novelty, escapism, sound instead of silence, activity
| instead of rigor mortis, ideas instead of void, life
| instead of death. Not just actionable facts to be studied.
|
| People think that, just not in those words.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| This seems unnecessarily negative and pessimistic. "Content"
| is the stuff or substance that people want to consume as
| opposed to all the associated stuff (branding, SEO, "hooks",
| whatever). "Content creator" recognizes that there is
| similarity between long form video essays and shorts and
| blogs and live streams - and that people who do one often do
| others.
| DowagerDave wrote:
| I don't agree. The emphasis on content implies it's the
| output that is most important, and that you can split it
| out from all the nonsense you differentiate above. Many of
| the people in this thread counter that the act of creation
| is the most important part. Just stop with "Creator" (or
| builder or writer).
| alwayslikethis wrote:
| Related: https://pauljun.me/the-four-dirty-c-words-of-the-
| internet
| HappMacDonald wrote:
| The challenge is that every fruit must have its seed. (Even
| seedless varieties are artificially created by labs which
| then themselves can be viewed as the seeds, but I digress..)
| Nothing of value to others is truly created in a vacuum. It
| must have some system of re-uptake, of value being conferred
| back to the creator or else it will never repeat. Ads are one
| potential way that can be accomplished, but as much as we
| hate ads we can't just expect them to go away and leave the
| "content" alone. We have to _replace_ them with some other
| superior way of remunerating the creators. I wish flattr
| would have took off as a service, that sort of low-friction
| idea seemed quite promising.
| kiba wrote:
| I don't use the word "content" that way. What you call
| "content" I call internet slops.
| jeremyjh wrote:
| Content is absolutely the best word for most of the shit they
| are shoveling. I would never use this term to describe a
| musician or author though I admit it isn't possible to
| objectively prove the difference and I wouldn't be surprised
| if younger people can't tell at all.
| hengheng wrote:
| Content describes a place in media in a formal way, by saying
| where it goes and what its role is. This way to categorize
| "content" makes it a form.
|
| It's similar to how Content Management Systems used to manage
| the layout and navigation of a website, but never managed the
| content. They accessed the content that came out of the
| database, but surely there had to be an author to manage the
| content. The CMS did everything but.
| maxvt wrote:
| We got a great new word for it now: "slop" (as in, "AI-
| generated slop").
|
| It can be human generated as well, and the key point is
| exactly as you wrote it -- it only exists to sell ads around
| it and has minimal or even negative (wrong or outdated
| information, poor reasoning, etc.) nutritional value.
| 8bitsrule wrote:
| So, it's a lot like newstand (or grocery aisle) popular
| magazines did back then, back in the Elvis days.
| guy234 wrote:
| Perhaps an indication of its superficiality is the
| awkwardness of describing something as "content about" a
| topic. Its more like a binary, on/off, in that way similar to
| a lightbulb.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > That people refer to themselves as "content creators" is a
| sign that they see the value of their creative output only to
| make money
|
| and it is that way.
|
| the worse thing is that you have a younger generation
| thinking that it's the future of work or something. "Why do I
| need to do well in school when I'm going to make cute TikTok
| videos and people are going to pay me lots of money" (almost
| verbatim words from a 12 year old boy)
| hbarka wrote:
| What term would you prefer?
| rambambram wrote:
| This museum definitely has some nice content, even better
| than the content at the library!
|
| I think the use of the word 'content' stems from the times
| when all this technological innovation had more emphasis on
| programming and design and people were busy to find
| ideas/applications for all the newfound possibilities.
| Content was an afterthought.
|
| I remember being busy with building a website - around 1998
| or so - and only afterwards asking myself what I should use
| it for. I already got my high from finishing the
| programming/coding, now I had to fill it up with content.
|
| Some years later, throw some marketeers and MBA type people
| in the mix, mix it with SEO and ads, and a legitimate need
| for 'content' arises. Doesn't matter what content, just
| content. Google is going to decide whether it's good content
| ('good' of course meaning 'monetizable').
| blackbrokkoli wrote:
| Genuine question:
|
| If you write only for yourself, what motivates you to actually
| finish, and more importantly, polish a post?
|
| I write for myself all the time, in private: I have a journal,
| a paper notebook, thousands of notes in Obsidian. Yet doing a
| blog post feels like a massive undertaking every single time,
| especially the later writing and editing: explaining stuff that
| is obvious to me and no one else, replacing idiosyncratic
| abbreviations, fixing formatting issues, fixing blogging engine
| or hosting stuff. I think I struggle with these parts _because_
| doing those tasks doesn 't benefit me very much.
|
| So how do you do these things within the framework of writing
| for oneself? Any takes on this?
| vanjajaja1 wrote:
| just dont do any of that. write at the level you want to
| write at and publish what you have. its a kind of self esteem
| work to say "what i write for myself is fine to make public"
|
| and then being public also inspires slightly higher quality
| JohnMakin wrote:
| I don't write too much anymore, one of my blogs got a lot
| more exposure and attention than I was comfortable with and
| people online in general are weirdo freaks and annoying to
| deal with. I guess I didn't fuss too much with that stuff,
| the quality was likely poorer than it could have been. Same
| with my video stuff, I just don't care that much if it's
| polished. Audience feedback sometimes helps but isn't that
| motivating to me.
| DowagerDave wrote:
| >> and people online in general are weirdo freaks and
| annoying to deal with.
|
| This is definitely the current internet and not the typical
| experience back when blogging was very popular. It's too
| easy to access and produce low-quality contributions today,
| which (ironically?) is something that blogs countered and
| also probably led to their decline.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| > This is definitely the current internet and not the
| typical experience back when blogging was very popular.
|
| This has been my experience for much of the last ~15
| years as an extremely niche internet personality but it
| is definitely worse lately, particularly the amount of
| outrage people can generate out of nowhere over the most
| benign things - my response is always an exasperated
| "you're perfectly free to simply not consume this." But
| people then take it waaaaay too far.
| raesene9 wrote:
| I can answer for me (I've been blogging just over 20 years at
| this point). There's a couple of main reasons for me to write
| a blog instead of just an obsidian note.
|
| Firstly, the process of writing a blog post makes me think
| through my assumptions as I'm explaining the concepts it
| covers to other people. On more than one occasion I've
| realised while writing, that my understanding of the topic
| wasn't entirely correct, so it's useful here.
|
| Also I blog so the information is available to others. If I
| spent a decent amount of time working things out, it's
| possible that a blog could save other people in similar
| situations effort, so that's handy.
|
| Lastly I blog so I can point people to a post instead of
| explaining a topic in detail, it's a handy time saver for
| things that come up a lot.
|
| As to benefits, well it wasn't deliberate but blogging
| contributed to me getting my last two jobs, so in that sense
| I guess it's paid off pretty well!
| ipaddr wrote:
| Perfectionism would cause someone to polish something like
| this.
|
| If that doesn't hit home don't polish just post.
| sanex wrote:
| If I publish what I write then it forces me to actually put
| some effort into making it readable but I don't necessarily
| think of the audience when I'm writing. Just more of from a
| perspective of spelling and grammar. Personally it's the
| knowledge of the fact it will be public is the accountability
| I need to put in that extra effort and future me is grateful
| I can comprehend what current me is saying.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| for me, i've saved myself time and energy at least 10 times
| by writing stuff down and publishing it on my blog/forums. i
| know i help people, but i mainly do it for Future Sergio.
| syntaxfree wrote:
| Are you somehow closely related to one Tito Tapia?
| genezeta wrote:
| Not the person above, but...
|
| > I write for myself all the time, in private
|
| The approach can be similar. I mean, I write for myself;
| nobody reads my blog. They can, sure, but nobody does because
| I almost never give out the URL to anyone.
|
| So the result is I don't feel the need to care too much about
| explaining, etc. except when I want.
| aksss wrote:
| Not op, but..
|
| Writing for my future self (I know from coding) is like
| writing for another person. So making it readable, sources
| cited, etc. is being kind to future me.
|
| Also, it's like that old saw about teaching - if you can't
| explain something to another, you probably don't _really_
| know the topic. The exercise of writing about something with
| another person in mind helps me organize the information and
| understand it at a deeper level.
| itshossein wrote:
| "Writing is thinking. The clearer your thoughts, the better
| the output. It's kind of the main reason why writing is an
| essential part of the learning process (especially in
| schools)."
| syntaxfree wrote:
| > especially the later writing and editing: explaining stuff
| that is obvious to me and no one else
|
| I don't do this. I write expecting the audience to pretty
| much have read the entirety of my blog to understand any
| single entry. I like to think there's a mystique to it --
| I've long enjoyed unpacking the ideas of obscure thinkers,
| myself.
|
| Then: I've known of maybe 10 people over a combined five
| years that have made the effort to read a lot of my stuff.
| nickjj wrote:
| I have 500+ posts over ~9 years and the polish is what lets
| me absorb what I've written into memory.
|
| If I look at the titles of all of my posts I can pretty much
| recall the details of the post to a reasonable degree,
| certainly enough to get a complete gist of it and understand
| the head space I was in at the time.
|
| If I stick to internal chicken scratch notes then I have a
| harder time remembering things later. I guess you could say
| it's the process of writing a somewhat coherent post that has
| a beginning, middle and end that's really helpful for
| retention.
| jaw wrote:
| For me personally, the effort of 'polishing' a post makes it
| drastically more valuable to myself in the end: I think
| harder about the material; I notice problems with my thinking
| that I would have glossed over otherwise; I explain things in
| ways that will be more useful/legible to me-five-years-from-
| now.
|
| Committing myself to publish posts is, in part, sort of a
| motivational hack to get me to do the polishing. The
| possibility that someone else _might_ read it and judge me
| for it pushes me to put much more effort in than I would if I
| kept it private. (I wrote a short blog post on this:
| https://brokensandals.net/personal/reviews-as-notes/)
|
| I probably wouldn't see this as a sufficient reason for
| blogging if I believed that _literally_ nobody would _ever_
| read the stuff I post. But it is a significant benefit that's
| available even if I only have a very tiny and sporadic
| audience.
| JeremyMorgan wrote:
| I can't speak for the original author, but crafting a great
| blog post is fun. And, there are thousands of people a day
| who read my blog, but even if it were zero it would be the
| same.
|
| The "polish" and working on it is part of craft, it's no
| different than carving something out of wood and not showing
| it to anyone. You still had fun creating the product and
| shaping it how you wanted.
| llm_trw wrote:
| > If you write only for yourself, what motivates you to
| actually finish, and more importantly, polish a post?
|
| Because I will eventually have the same problem again and if
| it's not documented to hell and back it will take me days to
| figure out what I did the last time to solve it.
|
| The third time you find a 10 year old post by yourself asking
| how to solve the same problem you're having now and posting
| "nvm - I got it" is the time you appreciate documentation and
| run books.
| dandigangi wrote:
| Agreed! I find myself writing or other content that I don't
| share around. Just sits on my site. Helped me by getting it out
| of my head and if someone stumbles on it, great. If not, all
| good!
| jhp123 wrote:
| The idea of content creation as a full time career is literally
| ancient, e.g. musicians have been paid for thousands of years.
| The Napster-era ideology that "information wants to be free" is
| the outlier.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| This is a dishonest framing, I think. The scale and type of
| content, especially the way it is expected to be consumed, on
| top of a hyper-monetized ad framework was not a thing in
| ancient times. I also think very few people picked up a lute
| in those days with the idea that they were only going to play
| if it made them money (artists have for much of modern
| history notoriously made a poor living). The point I was
| making was not that an artist making a living from their art
| is a new thing, no one is making that point.
| cookiengineer wrote:
| Quality content gets punished.
|
| Investigative journalism went down the drain for the same
| reasons. Clickbait content is so much cheaper to produce and
| has the same effect, because you can produce hundreds of
| clickbait articles in the same time.
|
| Soon every video has to have Mr.Beast's ADHD inducing video
| cutstyle because otherwise the algorithms will punish you for
| producing too slow content.
|
| I miss the old days where I could just watch a Carmack
| interview for 4 hours straight and listen to their insights
| without getting a burnout after 15 minutes of video time.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| It always seems to me there's room for a platform like the
| "old" youtube that doesn't behave this way? Or maybe youtube
| just has too much critical mass for that ever to work.
| cookiengineer wrote:
| A lot of producers that want to make longer content about a
| topic at some point dual upload or switch to nebula, as far
| as I can tell in my interest niches. Not sure if there are
| other platforms.
|
| (I also like to watch a lot of those oldskool slow nature
| documentaries while coding. In Germany, arte, NDR and WDR
| have some nice ones in their media platforms.)
| tdeck wrote:
| I really feel this with podcasts; everyone seems like they need
| to make a buck now. Before about 2015 there were so many great
| podcasts that people did for fun or because they wanted to get
| a message out. Slowly, one by one, they started adding
| sponsorships for Blue Apron and NatureBox and SquareSpace
| (these were the VPMs of 2015). Now even the most niche podcast
| has algorithmic ads. I frequently hear creators say that these
| ads make very little money but I guess the creators think
| they're losing out by not including them.
|
| I remember listening to The Skeptics Guide to the Universe back
| then and thinking "everyone else is adding ads but I bet this
| one never will, they've been doing it ad-free for like a
| decade". Then a year later they had ads. It's just sad to think
| of what we've lost.
| I-M-S wrote:
| Most podcasts offer an ad-free version if you throw 2 or 3
| bucks per month to them.
| nineteen999 wrote:
| > The idea of content creation as a full time career is
| relatively new, and I hate it.
|
| I do too, but IMHO unfortunately us older generations have a
| lot to answer for when it comes to this. My teenage daughter
| plus all of her friends all want to be content creators. It's
| the 21st century equivalent of becoming a pop star or being a
| TV personality. As an industry we've automated away a lot of
| the jobs that these kids otherwise could have had, handed them
| a bunch of shitty tools and algorithms and shown them that this
| is a way to make money. I don't find their attitude all that
| surprising.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| And it's not really new. Being a YouTuber or TikToker was
| obviously not possible before those platforms existed, but
| people were musicians, actors, or other sorts of performers,
| or wrote stuff that they tried to get published, it's all the
| same drive. Some wanted to do it to become a star and get
| paid, others did it for the love of the craft.
|
| The internet is a new avenue for this, that's all.
| ghaff wrote:
| >21st century equivalent of becoming a pop star or being a TV
| personality
|
| Which were always lottery professions at best. Being
| influencers/YouTube stars/etc. may seem more accessible these
| days but it's probably mostly an illusion. There are (mostly)
| plenty of jobs but most of them are probably pretty
| unglamorous.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| I think both of these things are true:
|
| * It's more accessible to be an influencer today than a pop
| star 20 years ago
|
| * Becoming an influencer is a lot like being a lottery
| winner.
|
| Bands on the radio had massive audiences. A decent Youtuber
| is getting 10k views on their video, which is a much
| smaller piece of the pie than any band that aired on the
| radio in the early 2000s. But for every Youtuber with 10k
| views there's hundreds, maybe thousands, of Youtubers with
| videos in the single digit of views.
| shiroiushi wrote:
| Conversely, there's far, far more "decent Youtubers" with
| 10k views now than there were bands on the radio 30 years
| ago. Only a very lucky few bands ever got airtime like
| that. 10k-view Youtubers are common.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| Indeed and that's what I think is motivating so many
| people to become "content creators". And I don't know if
| that's a bad thing. If you're getting 10k views you have
| a comfy community around you and you're at the least
| making side income money. That's plenty to complement a
| not very demanding day job. Being a member of these comfy
| communities is fun, it's like being in a much smaller
| version of HN.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| And my generation all wanted to be popstars, actors and
| models (well I wanted to program computers, but whatever).
| Kids don't change that much, it is just us who are getting
| older.
| nineteen999 wrote:
| Totally, I quit high school at 15 to become a rock star. It
| didn't pan out.
|
| I think the difference is the automation, the algorithms
| designed to maximise for maximum engagement of human
| attention. Growing up in the MTV generation, these
| algorithms were handled mostly by humans, and their reach
| was limited due to television, radio and print media being
| the dominant form of communication with the audience.
|
| Now we have an Internet, everyone including our kids is
| connected, everything is only a click away, and the
| algorithms run at massive speed due to the compute power of
| today.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I write stuff that I'd like to read.
|
| I've found that most others, don't want to read it. It seems
| that it needs to be short-form video, if I want to get
| eyeballs.
|
| Meh, whatevs. I still do it. Making decent video is a a _lot_
| more work than writing.
|
| https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany
| brightball wrote:
| I write when I've had something on my mind for a while and I
| need to get it out of my head. Also helps me to work through it
| in more detail.
|
| I've had a few things get picked up here that got some good
| attention but many people complain that what I write is too
| long. It's usually too long because I'm trying to complete the
| thought for my own sake. One of these days, I could honestly
| see writing a book because those long posts are usually
| shortened as much as I can.
| pbreit wrote:
| I cannot believe that Dave Winer is still at it after 30 years:
| http://scripting.com
| AlienRobot wrote:
| I realized I had become a boomer when I saw people using the
| term "Youtuber" as a normal job description which, through all
| my life, I had thought of as a "joke" profession like
| "Influencer."
|
| Now they're all real, and I'm officially boomed. Youtuber,
| Influencer, Content Creator, Streamer, even VTuber. I'm sure
| the world of professional TikTokers is also upon us.
| paradox460 wrote:
| I feel much the same way, to the extent that I only very
| recently added analytics to my blog, via plausible
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| > I do not disagree that creators should be able to monetize
| their content however they please, but the fact that people see
| that as the end and only goal of content creation is baffling
| to me and almost certainly making it worse.
|
| It is 110% making it worse, but I feel the need to point out
| this attitude is not coming from nowhere. We're getting
| squeezed on every side, everything in life is more expensive
| year over year, wages are stagnant at best and falling at
| worst. Doing shit just for the sake of doing it is increasingly
| becoming a luxury the young can't afford. It isn't that nobody
| wants to, it's that they literally can't justify spending time
| on things they find interesting, fulfilling or otherwise
| beneficial without some kind of monetary gain at least possible
| in the future because they're struggling to afford the basics
| of life, let alone whatever they might need to make or do
| whatever they might want to.
|
| I don't mean to come down on you in particular, I just see this
| attitude everywhere, and it's frankly dismissive as fuck of the
| genuine economic vice that the young find themselves in right
| now. You want people to do stuff without an eye directly
| towards how it can make them money? Cool, odds are damn good a
| whole lot of the people you're complaining about would very
| much love the freedom to do something that doesn't make money
| without feeling like they're screwing themselves possibly into
| going hungry tonight.
|
| Make the world you want to see.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > the fact that other people may want to watch it is secondary
|
| I don't do much social networking (deleted FB, Twitter) but I
| still have an IG account because I like seeing pictures of
| interesting places, so I mostly follow thru-hikers, world
| travelers, cyclists, etc. I've seen the transition where some
| of these world travelers just start posting content for
| themselves, and others just happen to enjoy them. Then they
| slowly get more viewers because whatever they're doing is
| interesting, and eventually it reaches a point I guess to where
| money can be made, then it switches to content creator mode.
| And then it's not about sharing what they're doing or their
| interests with others, it's about views and catering to the
| viewers. It's not wrong or bad--I guess it's nice they can fund
| their lifestyle through that, but it becomes "ad-funded
| entertainment", which is a huge turn-off for me, that's when I
| unfollow.
|
| If I find an account interesting, the first thing I do is look
| at the follower count. If it's a high number, I don't follow
| the account because it's already clear what that account is.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Something has gone wrong when we use and accept uning "content"
| as a euphemism for what is actually advertising.
|
| We're not longer citizens, mearly consumers.
| karaterobot wrote:
| I started my blog when I went to college in the late nineties,
| and if I don't count the few years after grad school when I
| stopped altogether, it's been updated fairly consistently this
| whole time. It's changed a lot: I used to write full articles and
| short stories every week, but now that is rare (though it still
| happens: I just did one a few days go). It's evolved into being
| mostly a commonplace book now.
|
| What's more, all search engines are disallowed, and there are no
| comments, so it's just for me and a few people who know about it.
| Design-wise, it's just a single file with minimal HTML, and
| thousands of entries, sorted by time. You can search it with
| cmd-f, or have the page scroll to a random entry. It loads in
| about a second. There are at least two ways it gives me value: in
| having an archive of 25+ years of things I thought were
| important, and giving me a reason to keep my eyes open for things
| to think and post about.
|
| I think that's an unusual reason to have a blog, but I also think
| the people who started blogs to make money or get hired are
| probably out of the game by now, too.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| This resonates with me. I had a recent stint of not writing due
| to very intense discouragement and feeling like a bit of a fraud.
| Like Jonas, I was writing for myself and kind of lived in a
| bubble where my posts had no comment system and I saw around 5
| visitors per day on average with the odd boom to hundreds to
| thousands for a day or two. This was rare. I didn't worry much
| about what I wrote so much as how much I enjoyed writing it.
|
| Eventually I was struggling in the job market and someone
| suggested that my writing was hurting my prospects. They found
| the odd typo and grammar mistake, thought the content wasn't
| particularly good, that it was hard to follow/disjointed, etc.
|
| I immediately took it all down and felt like a bit of a fool to
| have thought anyone would actually find it useful. Maybe I should
| have written it but kept it offline like a personal journal, I
| thought.
|
| After a year or so it occurred to me how incredibly wrong all of
| that was. I never should have taken anything offline. I've hired
| people before, many times, and not once did I stumble across a
| candidate's personal blog and think "ugh, typos. grammar
| mistakes. no thanks". These things are a signal of a person's
| character, curiosity, ability, and all kinds of other factors
| that matter a lot. Almost always these things helped people I was
| hiring more than it hurt. There's the odd case where I could tell
| the site wasn't followed through on and that's not great, but
| it's very relatable too.
|
| I took a while but started writing again, started sharing it in
| an attempt to shake the self-doubt out of myself, and it has been
| an incredibly refreshing and rejuvenating experience. Writing
| reminds me of what I love about programming, because I primarily
| write about the things I find fascinating or engaging. It gives
| me a greater sense of knowledge and ability as I've covered a
| topic so thoroughly. It's a mental exercise not only in writing
| itself, but understanding.
|
| Jonas says this and I couldn't agree more: something about it is
| just fun. I can't put my finger on it. When I'm writing, I'm in a
| focused and engaged state almost instantly. It's where I want to
| be.
|
| If you doubt yourself and feel like writing isn't for you--even
| though you enjoy it--I hope you can take something from my
| experience and realize that it's still worth it. No one cares if
| you don't write like an acclaimed author. No one cares if there's
| the odd typo or bad grammar. The point is to enjoy it, and share
| that with people who are curious. The more you do it, the better
| you'll get. It can become a real source of joy in your life.
| iamgopal wrote:
| Live journal anyone ?
| kidsil wrote:
| Your trajectory is quite similar to mine, particularly working
| with Kohana and Jekyll over the years.
|
| My blog, in its current iteration, has also recently turned 15
| (first post on June 27th, 2009). Reflecting on this long journey
| and how it has helped my career, I've decided to write a book
| about the experience.
|
| If you'll excuse a bit of self-promotion, those interested can
| find out more at https://codertocto.com.
|
| I hope sharing my journey might be helpful to others on a similar
| path.
| xenodium wrote:
| If you have stopped blogging, been meaning to get back on it, or
| simply want to start, but been put off by the popular platform
| options, I'm working on a blogging platform myself that sheds the
| crummy modern bits of the web: https://lmno.lol. Here's my own
| blog https://lmno.lol/alvaro (about 10 years worth of posts). You
| can read the blogs on your phone, your desktop, your terminal. No
| JS needed.
|
| Coincidentally the platform hits nearly all of the wished items
| in this recent lobste.rs post
| https://lobste.rs/s/d1n9k6/kind_websites_i_like
|
| You can drag and drop your entire blog from a markdown file
| https://indieweb.social/@xenodium/112265481282475542 User your
| favorite text editor to write.
|
| No need to sign up or log in to try it out. You can edit
| ephemeral blogs.
|
| I haven't officially launched, but if you'd like to get blogging,
| I'll be happy to share an invite code to get you started now.
| Ping help AT lmno.lol.
| dunefox wrote:
| Does it support latex formula and code highlighting? There are
| some things I absolutely need in a blog, and I can't seem to
| find a simple one that supports everything.
| xenodium wrote:
| While you can embed code blocks, you can they aren't syntax
| highlighted yet. It's on the roadmap. I take it you mean to
| render latex? I'd need to figure out if I can render server-
| side. Trying to avoid client-side JS. I can add a feature
| request to the backlog.
|
| The more desireable things can be added over time. I need to
| launch first. I also need to be mindful of what's added, so I
| things stay fairly lean and snappy.
| 8bitsrule wrote:
| When I saw I could use HTML I was interested. Then I saw:
|
| "Note: style attributes are currently blocked via Content-
| Security-Policy."
|
| That's probably not for me. Restrictions on HTML are a stopper.
| xenodium wrote:
| The end-goal isn't to restrict, but rather safeguard readers
| (avoid injecting questionable JS that's everywhere on the
| web). Is styling what you're after? Something else? Happy to
| consider different scenarios and open those up.
| boarnoah wrote:
| Something that gives me pause (to actually write into a blog) or
| to put up any toy projects / exploratory code as FOSS is I am not
| too keen on the idea of LLM companies and similar scraping that
| for their dataset [1].
|
| Its not really a new problem, scraping the web and similar for
| monetary profit has been a thing for decades, but it feels worse
| in some ways? At least I certainly have paused and had more of a
| reluctance to making minor things available with no strings
| attached than I historically have been.
|
| Same goes for writing into sites like HN or Reddit really.
|
| Perhaps that is being selfish, after all there is some value in
| documenting things for other humans to find out about, maybe
| time-capsule of a blog is a better fit for this? Although
| blogging about anything particularly niche / context heavy is
| likely irrelevant a few years on.
|
| EDIT:
|
| [1] As in not help them even in a minuscule way, anymore than has
| already been done with them buying / scraping any public content
| already written.
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| A lot of interesting discussions.
|
| I personally hope the internet and it's archives stick around for
| a long time. I wonder whether the future will be interested in
| the past. Who among us might live in obscurity today, only to be
| a star in 2424?
| maurits wrote:
| "I keep this blog for me to write, not necessarily for others to
| read."
|
| That's me. I started in 2006, except I just post photos.
| fsndz wrote:
| blogging is such a nice way to sharpen thinking skills. I love
| doing it.
| aprdm wrote:
| With all the AI generated content, we will be having AI models
| using AI generated text on the internet. Blogs from people who
| are hopefully not using AI to generate text might be the only
| valid source of truth in a near future
| wslh wrote:
| I think the discussion around AI-generated content is worth
| exploring beyond the obvious concerns. If you're original and
| use AI as part of your creative toolbox, that's great, what
| matters is the work you produce and the unique touch you give
| it. There's no rule that says we have to post an unfiltered
| output of an LLM.
|
| On the research side, it would be fascinating to explore
| measures of randomness or originality within LLM models. I'm
| sure many researchers are already investigating how genuinely
| novel content like new poetry can influence and evolve these
| models over time.
| aksss wrote:
| I more worry about AI hoovering up my hard work and that makes
| me think about the honesty of my beliefs about why I write.
|
| In my hobby domain, authors were traditionally very protective
| of obscure sources, it was all about getting the book
| published, becoming recognized authority. There would be a
| sense of pride in having an expensive limited-run book. They
| were/are gate-keepers extraordinaire.
|
| I kind of hate that hoarding of knowledge. But maybe my
| approach wasn't about the virtue of making info available to
| all, but more like Bezos' theme of, "your margin is my
| opportunity".
|
| I still appreciate some recognition and am not writing to feed
| a machine. Someone back during the Industrial Revolution
| remarked that the machines and engines are supposed to aid
| people but when you go into a factory you see the people
| climbing all over the machines to fix them, and sometimes at
| great risk of injury, like we are here for the care and feeding
| of the machines.
|
| Just makes me think.
| Minor49er wrote:
| > I more worry about AI hoovering up my hard work... I still
| appreciate some recognition and am not writing to feed a
| machine.
|
| I don't get this focus on so-called AI. Google and other bot
| farms have been hoovering up hard work wholesale for decades,
| even intercepting clicks and credit via things like AMP
|
| If people give up writing, then only bots will be writers.
| Damn the technology and keep posting
| shahzaibmushtaq wrote:
| Writing, updating and saving your progress in several drafts is
| the only place where you write for yourself, but as soon as you
| publish them online it automatically becomes for everyone using
| the internet. And
|
| > I keep this blog for me to write, not necessarily for others to
| read
|
| is the exact opposite mindset sentence (or whatever people want
| to call it) of what I wrote in my Medium account bio, which is "I
| write for myself so that everyone can read it."
|
| Here is the link -> https://medium.com/@shahzaib
| mooreds wrote:
| I've been blogging since 2003. I still blog because it clarifies
| my thoughts, lets me show off my knowledge, and occasionally even
| helps people.
| wslh wrote:
| I appreciate the author's reflection on blogging for 15 years,
| but I didn't fully connect with the vibe. I've been maintaining
| several blogs (both personal and business) for years, and even
| had a personal webpage that shared personal content before the
| 2000s. It reminds me of artists like Edgar Allan Poe, who,
| despite their struggles, couldn't stop writing. When it's in your
| nature, there's no 'off switch' no matter the circumstances.
| forrestthewoods wrote:
| I love my blog. I post like maybe 4 times a year when I feel
| suitably inspired.
|
| I find HN far and away the most random aggregator. Reddit is very
| reliable for me. When I share my posts on HN they almost never
| get traction. But then they randomly do months later when someone
| shares the same post! Kind of annoying.
|
| My blog is artisanal handcrafted HTML and CSS. I honestly find it
| much easier and simpler than generators.
|
| I currently host on Cloudflare for free. I was previously on
| Netlify.
|
| https://www.forrestthewoods.com/blog/
| aksss wrote:
| > I love my blog.
|
| Ha, ditto. I'm sure I'm my own biggest fan and reader. I'm
| making content I want to see more of on the Internet, and am
| proud of it! :)
| forrestthewoods wrote:
| My blog is honestly one of the best things I've done for my
| career. Writing skills are super valuable but no programmers
| are taught how to write. It's not a skill we explicitly
| develop. Learning how to express ideas for various audiences
| is _super_ useful. I've gotten, imho, pretty good at both
| writing and presenting and I attribute a lot of that to 10+
| years of blog writing.
| trustno2 wrote:
| It's called "newsletter" now.
| JeremyMorgan wrote:
| I have no idea who this person is, but I loved reading this
| article. The author is clearly a better writer than me and
| managed cleanly assemble the reasons most of us do this.
|
| I also run a blog and have since 1997. Didn't start seriously
| contributing until 2008 or so. It's a labor of love and I do it
| for many of the reasons stated here. Love to write, love to push
| myself to make things more "usable" for folks other than me. And
| it helps me check myself on certain topics (do I understand this
| enough to teach it to someone else?)
|
| I have been hassled by some younger folks who say "blogging is
| dead" (can't argue with that) and it's a waste of time because it
| will never make me viral, rich, or famous (I knew that before I
| started). But I do it for me, and I still recommend other people
| do it as well. It's good for the soul.
| dankwizard wrote:
| "I keep this blog for me to write, not necessarily for others to
| read" he says, in an article written entirely for other viewers.
| teleforce wrote:
| >Time flies when you're having fun
|
| I know it's a cliche but it's very true
| Stem0037 wrote:
| In this age of metrics and analytics, it's easy to get caught up
| in chasing views. But writing for yourself rather than for clicks
| seems like a much more sustainable long-term approach.
| tclover wrote:
| Nobody cares why you are still blogging
| RheingoldRiver wrote:
| > 15 years is a long time; longer than I've been waiting for
| Winds of Winter
|
| don't do that to me
| yakshaving_jgt wrote:
| I haven't a clue how Seth Godin manages to write one blog post
| every single day, of every month, of every year.
|
| Maybe blog posts should be a little lower effort, like tweets.
| sunny_sigara wrote:
| Can you share the theme you are using ? I want to check if it can
| be deployed on github pages. Thanks.
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