I had every intent of jumping in the car and heading out to Wal-mart to get some stuff for the house, but unfortunately Mother Nature has decided to open the skies and increase the volume. So since I’m stuck on the couch until the storm passes, I figured I’d take a few minutes to finally blog. It also doesn’t help that Bella is terrified of thunder storms, and if you even say the phrase “Boom boom!” she’ll hide in the nearest tight spot she can get herself into. Right now? She’s between me and the back of the couch and that’s pretty much where she’s going to stay until she feels a change in the atmosphere. I also would feel terrible leaving her by herself during a storm due to the cuddle factor involved with her anxiety.
Anyhow… I got into a long conversation with Arwen today about random things and the one thing we both agree on is the fact that the Internet, as we O.Gs remember it, is nothing like it used to be. There was a time when people heavily focused on personal websites, not micro blogging and social media. Sure, we all had MySpace accounts but the focus was always on regular blogging, constant theme updating and spending the time going through hundreds of thousands of links to comment on other personal blogs. There was also the perk of Internet Drama between different cliques to keep the hits coming. I’ll admit, I bought into that quite frequently but that ended almost 10 years ago and that’s that.
What always amused me was the amount of money spent on domain names just so you could host other people for free, at a time when webhosting was crazy expensive. Now? You can buy a domain and hosting for $10-$20 a year but everyone prefers to utilize WordPress.com, Tumblr, or even skip blogging all together and just constantly update their Twitter accounts because “Microblogging” is just the way to be. I’ve also found that quite a few people who no longer Blog are now Vlogging. OK, so it might be easier to just talk to a camera to get your thoughts out, but why is no one capable of READING anymore? I remember seeing an episode of “Two Broke Girls” where Max said something that instantly clicked, and made me laugh so hard I almost wet my pants. “Twitter is dumb, and Instagram is for people who can’t read”. This statement, while it was just meant as a joke, is 100% true. You’ll see more selfies and hashtags floating around the internet than you’ll ever see blog articles. And why? Why is the instant gratification of a picture or video taking precedence over reading?
How many original bloggers are still floating around and actually updating their sites? Yes, I know I’m guilty of not blogging for quite some time, but life does take the precedence over Internet too. Are there any of the older blogrolls floating around that house ANY active sites? If I knew there was more of a ‘market’ for it I’d bring back a site like Provance or Despair so that there was at least three new people per-day that would give me the drive to not only read/comment on their sites, but the drive to focus more on mine as well.
I think the issue for me, is still life. The list of 20-something bloggers has now turned into 30-something bloggers who all have jobs and/or children that keep them from doing anything but reading recipes and searching for make-it-yourself toys/crafts for your children. The ‘break’ from that would be posting pictures of whatever you cooked or your child created onto Instagram, which then updates your Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr simultaneously to keep you ‘connected’. But, why is no one connected to a ‘diary’ type of thing anymore? Isn’t that what the original blogs were really meant for? Yea, ok so a picture is still a glimpse into your world… but for some reason I feel that my brain works better on the descriptive level… that’s all.