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Why I’ve started a blog

1. The internet kinda sucks right now

Here is a timeline of my relationship with the internet in the last two years:

  • I deleted TikTok because it was too good.
  • I deleted Twitter when it became X.
  • I deleted the Reddit app because it was too good.
  • I deleted Instagram because I was getting got by Reels.
  • I re-installed TikTok to watch everything that Wes sent me, but it became a problem and I deleted it again.
  • I re-installed Instagram and had a Screen Time password set by Megan, that was set to shut IG down after like… 45 minutes. Hitting that limit and asking Megan for the password was too goofy of an idea and so I never went past the 45 minutes, unlike when I had set the Screen Time limit myself.
  • That… also started to feel too much and so I deleted Instagram again.
  • I vibed with nothing but an Apple News+ subscription for a while… and adopted a ritual where I’d download TikTok before a flight, watch everything that Wes had sent me since I flew last, and then deleted it once the plane landed.
  • I downloaded BlueSky when that got hot.
  • Deleted BlueSky a month later.

What about really recently?

A month ago - I deleted the Apple News app. Yes - even that was getting to be too much. Instead, I downloaded an RSS Reader (Lire, to be exact).

I do, actually, have TikTok installed right now because I downloaded it to watch everything Wes sent one last time before it got sent to the abyss. It then didn’t actually get sent to the abyss. Alas… I haven’t opened it since that debacle.

I used ChatGPT to write a script in Python that found the top email senders in my personal and junk email accounts and deleted a ton of emails that way. I now take pleasure in unsubscribing from things that I never signed up for as a weird type of mind-numbing activity.

I refresh my RSS feed a few times a day and am presented with an egregious number of articles from the Oregonian. I’ve followed other local publications like Portland Monthly, Portland Mercury, Bridgetown Bites, PDX Pipeline, and The Portland Business Journal (for the headlines).

Oh shit back to the literal title of this post - I’ll continue on this in the appendix lol

2. I think it would be cool for the internet to be small again

What if my RSS feed had updates from my friends? Like… dare I say it…

The Olde Days™️

I am well aware that I am too young to have experienced said olde days, but I think that is the point. I never messed with the HTML on my MySpace page, because I was too young to have one. I overshared on Facebook and Twitter like the rest of us, but, those spaces don’t really have my friends anymore.

Those spaces have a 0% chance of coming back. Maybe a 1% chance now that Zuck has committed to bringing back “OG Facebook”

I’m not asking everyone that chooses to read this to go start a blog or a YouTube channel. If you do - pls tell me so I can add you to my RSS reader 💀

3. I have things to say and I want a non-addictive place to say them

Nothing of importance, really, but it would be nice to have a place to write about the little projects I’m doing (i.e. the email script), or the process of training for the Honolulu Marathon this year.

Partially for the people who are interested in following along, but mostly for myself, in an attempt to archive some of the things that happened in the 77.5 years I had on this burning planet.

From what I can gather - none of the social media apps we have in our lives today allow for that. I’m not even talking about the addictive part right now. I’m saying that there’s no space for a long-form text update, in a place that will be available as long as you decide that it will be.

Instagram? Sure - I could write a novel in a post, but that feels weird.
X? Instant pass. BlueSky? Better, but still limited.
Reddit? Also weird.
TUMBLR? What a throwback. I think I’ll pass though.
TikTok? No text, and did actually get shutdown for ~12 hours.
YouTube? This has some meat on the bones - not text, but could be useful as a supplement…

All of these (except maybe Tumblr) fail the non-addictive test, and they all also fail the could-go-away-on-a-whim test. It’s unlikely, but none of that data is in your control.

Enter - my own, personal blog, on my own, personal website.

Summary

Anyone that knows me knows that this could last for like one year and then you’ll never see a post on this page again. Hell, the domain may even expire.

I do think that the internet was cool, and can be cool again.
And I think that starting a blog that no-one will read is my attempt at that.

I hope to post about nerdy things, sort of athletic things, personal things, some photography/videography - who knows.

Download an RSS reader, or don’t! If you do, and I successfully figure out how to make this RSS readable. I would enjoy your invisible subscription.

Appendix

If you’re here you really care - that’s insane lol go touch grass

What do I mean by “too much” or “it became a problem”

I really don’t want this to come off as some BS productivity sell or a minimalism thing.

I just don’t think we’re meant to consume as much random shit as we do consume. I think that at this rate we’ll wake up at the age of 45 not having sought out as many novel experiences as we might have if we weren’t stuck on a For You page.

The FOMO on the latest memes and trends fades away, and there are ways to stay in touch that don’t involve doomscrolling. I spend a ton of time on YouTube, even though a lot of it is educational (shoutout to this 3Blue1Brown video that explains LLMs). There’s a channel called the Daily Dose of Internet that is exactly what it sounds like. I may not see the latest TikTok sound or Reel trend as fast, but I do see plenty of cats doing silly things.

How was this blog made?

I’m so glad you asked. I am using Hugo and at the moment that this was originally posted, I am using the no-style-please theme.

As Megan will tell you, I now spend MUCH of my day sending inane (and sometimes very NOT inane) queries to ChatGPT now that I started paying for it. The concept of Static Site Generators (SSGs) came from those ChatGPT sessions.

I bought the domain through Cloudflare and plan to use it’s Pages feature to host this for Free.99 … from what I understand.

How do you keep up on life events in your friends’ lives if you don’t have IG

I don’t 😭

If Megan doesn’t see it and tell me about it - consider it not seen.

I logged into IG on my LAPTOP the other day to make a snide comment about Albert having bought a Tesla, and the only reason I knew that he had posted about it is because Megan exclaimed and showed me her phone.

Please let me know if important shit happened in your life.

How do you keep up on important national and global news events?

ok i’ll open google news on my work laptop from time to time… and i open the apple news app on my laptop from time to time… i just had to remove it from my phone.

Also. I’m starting to develop this idea that if any non-local news is really that important - you are going to hear about it somehow. It’s going to get talked about at work. Your mom/dad is going to talk to you about it on the phone. If it’s really THAT big. You will hear about it.

What the F%$K is an RSS Reader and why?

Here’s what ChatGPT had to say about what it is:

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a web feed format that allows users to subscribe to updates from websites, such as news sites and blogs, without visiting them directly. It was developed in the late 1990s, with versions created by Netscape (RSS 0.90 in 1999) and later improved by developers like Dave Winer (RSS 2.0 in 2002).

 

RSS peaked in the 2000s but declined with the rise of social media and algorithm-driven content feeds. Today, while less mainstream, it remains popular among power users, journalists, and privacy-conscious individuals for tracking content efficiently, often through feed readers like Feedly, Inoreader, and self-hosted options like FreshRSS.

I’d like to zoom into that algorithm-driven content feeds bit for the why.

I’m old enough to remember when you’d refresh on an app feed and if you had seen all that there was to see … that was it. An RSS feed/reader is one of the few ways to have that back. You add publications to your feed, and once you’ve run out of articles - you’ve run out of articles. It’s done. It’s over.

Other feeds I follow:

I follow some standard tech publications (engadget, verge, etc.), I get a “Best Of” Hacker News feed. Some Apple/Mac stuff because I just became a MacOS girlie. That’s all for now!

The End

If you stuck around to the end - wow. See ya next time, maybe!