Joan Westenberg - The Case for Blogging in the Ruins
Joan Westenberg is one of my favourite writers. Her work is inspiring to me, and is part of the reason that I made a blog in the first place. I recently found her article "The Case for Blogging in the Ruins" through a post by Kev Quirk, and it encompasses may of the reasons I started blogging. I encourage everyone to read it.
One line in particular stands out to me, and it's about people who, in Joan's words, "have essentially stopped writing anything substantial because they've moved their entire intellectual presence to Twitter or Substack Notes." I've seen this too, and it's truly unfortunate. I've met lots of good people who have a lot of interesting things to say, and many of them have put their time and effort into consuming and fuelling social media algorithms.
Joan provides a list of blogging platforms at the end of her article, and encourages anyone who might be interest in blogging to give those platforms a try. I have another to recommend: Pika. It's how I got started with blogging, and it makes the whole process very easy and straightforward. Their free plan is very generous, as they give you your first 50 (50!!) posts for free. Pika is run by some truly incredible people, of which Barry Hess is one (and the founder of Good Enough — the small but wonderful company that runs Pika).
Start blogging. Make a place for yourself on the internet. Don't give Zuckerberg any more of your time or attention.