4 ms·

Every blog is a niche blog because blogging is a niche. It never was and never will be mainstream. Social media began as an attempt to make the spirit of bloggi

Every blog is a niche blog because blogging is a niche. It never was and never will be mainstream. Social media began as an attempt to make the spirit of blogging a low lift for the noobs. Today, you’re talking to an audience that is online, willing to venture outside social media, and opting to actively read content rather than passively listen or watch. That’s far from everyone and that’s okay.

viraptor 10mo ago
> It never was and never will be mainstream. We had the time around when blogspot was a thing when everyone and their dog had a blog. It was mainstream enough for "Julie and Julia". It was a different time.
- tinkelenberg 10mo ago
  It was a great time. Social media’s reached beyond that though. Grandma wasn’t online back then.
  - bji9jhff 10mo ago
    That grandma is dead. The online grandma is her daughter. *You changed your post and now mine doesn't make sense anymore. I forgive you but don't do it again.
    - tinkelenberg 10mo ago
      Fixed it for you.
      - bji9jhff 10mo ago
        Haha thanks ;)
  - munificent 10mo ago
    It was good when we had social networking, and it got bad when that turned into social media. The point should be connecting people to other people and their creativity, not just connecting people to content which may or may not be vomited out by generative AIs.
  - viraptor 10mo ago
    > Everyone and their mother wasn’t online back then. Yes, but - there were lots of people who got online in other to blog. Livejournal, blogspot and others were the reason some of their mothers did get online. It was that mainstream!
- simonw 10mo ago
  It's fun watching TV episodes from ~2005 to ~2015 and noting how common it was back then for a blog or blogger to be used as a plot point.
  - elcapitan 10mo ago
    Probably because writers love writers being a plot point ;)
- averageRoyalty 10mo ago
  I would argue that most people who had a blog were 15-25 in that time. Yes it was very common in that demo, but outside of it, it was definitely not. I don't know if that classifies as "mainstream".
  - HeinzStuckeIt 10mo ago
    The very active ecosystem of blogs I followed in the first decade of the new millennium, on arts themes (literature, cinema, non-popular music) and religious-denomination news, were mainly people above 30 blogging, sometimes much older. Wordpress had made it easy for any computer user, not just tech nerds, to set something up.
    - viraptor 10mo ago
      That and both mum blogs and early food blogs were definitely driven by older people.
- jdub 10mo ago
  Ha, Julie and Julia is an excellent riposte. The previous poster might also consider all the high profile, independent, and influential publications across various subjects that grew out of blogging – e.g. HuffPo, Pitchfork, Jezebel, so many video gaming and entertainment sites... many of which were sadly bought up by rich idiots and/or existing media conglomerates.
guestbest 10mo ago
Heh, when you started talking about venturing outside I thought you were going to talk about in real life meat space.phones and tablets really freed us up but we still don’t leave our house to go on the internet for discussions. Funny with all that freedom the untethered life gets us.
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
thinmalk 10mo ago
[dead]
HeinzStuckeIt 10mo ago
> Every blog is a niche blog because blogging is a niche. It never was and never will be mainstream. Content creation is indeed something a minority of society practices, but that can still be mainstream. In the first decade of the new millennium, the Movable Type and Wordpress ecosystem was active enough among ordinary people, not just nerds, that it led to things like local politicians being ousted, religious denominations’ leadership being shook up. All the drama now associated with Twitter/X happened on blogs before that. Watch the last episode of The Onion’s series Sex House from 2012. A joke about everyone focusing on blogging is used multiple times. Even after the rise of Web 2.0 social media platforms, social media and blogs still coexisted for a time. It wasn’t until just after this that Google began deranking niche sites, and social media platforms sought to keep people on their sites for maximum engagement.

viraptor 10mo ago

> It never was and never will be mainstream. We had the time around when blogspot was a thing when everyone and their dog had a blog. It was mainstream enough for "Julie and Julia". It was a different time.

tinkelenberg 10mo ago
It was a great time. Social media’s reached beyond that though. Grandma wasn’t online back then.
- bji9jhff 10mo ago
  That grandma is dead. The online grandma is her daughter. *You changed your post and now mine doesn't make sense anymore. I forgive you but don't do it again.
  - tinkelenberg 10mo ago
    Fixed it for you.
    - bji9jhff 10mo ago
      Haha thanks ;)
- munificent 10mo ago
  It was good when we had social networking, and it got bad when that turned into social media. The point should be connecting people to other people and their creativity, not just connecting people to content which may or may not be vomited out by generative AIs.
- viraptor 10mo ago
  > Everyone and their mother wasn’t online back then. Yes, but - there were lots of people who got online in other to blog. Livejournal, blogspot and others were the reason some of their mothers did get online. It was that mainstream!
simonw 10mo ago
It's fun watching TV episodes from ~2005 to ~2015 and noting how common it was back then for a blog or blogger to be used as a plot point.
- elcapitan 10mo ago
  Probably because writers love writers being a plot point ;)
averageRoyalty 10mo ago
I would argue that most people who had a blog were 15-25 in that time. Yes it was very common in that demo, but outside of it, it was definitely not. I don't know if that classifies as "mainstream".
- HeinzStuckeIt 10mo ago
  The very active ecosystem of blogs I followed in the first decade of the new millennium, on arts themes (literature, cinema, non-popular music) and religious-denomination news, were mainly people above 30 blogging, sometimes much older. Wordpress had made it easy for any computer user, not just tech nerds, to set something up.
  - viraptor 10mo ago
    That and both mum blogs and early food blogs were definitely driven by older people.
jdub 10mo ago
Ha, Julie and Julia is an excellent riposte. The previous poster might also consider all the high profile, independent, and influential publications across various subjects that grew out of blogging – e.g. HuffPo, Pitchfork, Jezebel, so many video gaming and entertainment sites... many of which were sadly bought up by rich idiots and/or existing media conglomerates.

guestbest 10mo ago

Heh, when you started talking about venturing outside I thought you were going to talk about in real life meat space.phones and tablets really freed us up but we still don’t leave our house to go on the internet for discussions. Funny with all that freedom the untethered life gets us.

deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]

thinmalk 10mo ago

[dead]

HeinzStuckeIt 10mo ago

> Every blog is a niche blog because blogging is a niche. It never was and never will be mainstream. Content creation is indeed something a minority of society practices, but that can still be mainstream. In the first decade of the new millennium, the Movable Type and Wordpress ecosystem was active enough among ordinary people, not just nerds, that it led to things like local politicians being ousted, religious denominations’ leadership being shook up. All the drama now associated with Twitter/X happened on blogs before that. Watch the last episode of The Onion’s series Sex House from 2012. A joke about everyone focusing on blogging is used multiple times. Even after the rise of Web 2.0 social media platforms, social media and blogs still coexisted for a time. It wasn’t until just after this that Google began deranking niche sites, and social media platforms sought to keep people on their sites for maximum engagement.