It seems to me that the blogosphere was not a ZIRP but rather a young Internet phenomenon. Which could exists, like usenet before it, when mere access to it was a filtering mechanism.
Once you have seven billion people with virtually no access control, you can't have a public blogosphere, and groups retreat to the cozyweb.
Either way, I enjoyed it while it lasted. Thanks for the Office series!
The public blogosphere died because of Google, simple as. Once search stopped prioritizing blogs over bloated, SEO-optimized slop, traffic to blogs died and discoverability was limited to you spamming your posts everywhere.
Google bought Blogger in 2003; that was the main blogging service for a long time in the US, at least. Google not being able to optimize search results for their own hosted content implies...a lack of overall content available. It used to be a lot better in the earlier days, for ROMs and especially album downloads blogs would pop up all the time in the results. It's just that there are a lot more people online now, and more accompanying spam, and also the fact that Google delists any sort of "download" type site by default - which used to be a substantial subcategory of blogs.
People forget how "tightened up" the web is nowadays, or many just aren't old enough to remember. It wasn't 10 years ago that Fox News would archive full, uncensored ISIS videos on their website - which is kind of insane, when you think about it.
Average age of first phone ownership is really young these days, which is arguably the #1 factor in everything online becoming a closed system for sheep.
On the other hand, no parents want their 11-year-old wandering into videos of hostages being burned alive. Or getting solicited for photos etc. So the internet is kind of dying for the sake of real life.
Those seven billion people aren't very good for the most part, and include a critical mass of spectacularly awful people. It turns out that public access forums calibrated for the small and self-selected community of mostly high quality internet pioneers aren't prepared to deal with 1000000x expansion of reachable audience. The Eternal September effect has been getting stronger ever since it's first been observed.
> "This blog was sponsored by ZIRP. The future historians who dive into these archives for archaeological research will likely be economic rather than cultural historians, trying to reconstruct the play-by-play impact of ZIRP. Many of the big hits of this blog, such as The Premium Mediocre Life of Maya Millennial, and The Locust Economy (a forgotten hit from 2013) had ZIRPy subtexts."
I think the author might he referring to their own blog (ribbonfarm) as a ZIRP phenomenon, not the whole blogosphere.
Don't think it's really systematic. I think this is just a generational cycle. Plenty of content coming from newer people on other platforms through other mediums.
Substack—and the surviving blogs that aren’t on Substack—are still going strong, and I don’t think they’re going to go away. Maybe Substack as a platform might decline the way Medium has. But the “Eternal September” types are usually either functionally illiterate or don’t like long form reading, and social media is increasingly optimized for those people. If you actually take the effort to write down your thoughts in text, you end up filtering for people intelligent and diligent enough to choose the written word even when video and photo content is readily available.
Substack (together with Medium) appears to be the blogosphere. As usual, venture capitalists managed to take over an open protocol and turn it into a singular product.
Eh, even in his niche we have people like Gwern pioneering in the aesthetic web movement. I'm not sure I buy the web is dying so much as the cultural conversation revolves around the larger platforms ($$) along with in general web discoverability getting worse.
Having access to wikipedia on a phone everywhere you go is what killed the bar conversation. No longer did you have to compare notes and argue over beers to remember trivia.
And in that same way, no longer do people have to ramble on into the aether in blog form to work through some shit. Now they can do that with ChatGPT and actually get responses to their thoughts in real time. And most of the time it's agreeable in tone.
Tech continues to change the world.
Maybe that isn't what is contributing to this particular blog dying, but I bet it's contributing to the larger community of blogs dying, which has probably created some inertia.
From what I can tell, highschooler and younger, there's almost a complete abandonment of mainstream social media in favor of self-curated chats like Discord, and it revolves heavily around gaming. A sort of hearkening to the AIM days, which is naturally what you'd expect from individuals who socialize in friendgroups that are developed beyond "work drinking buddies", lol.
But in general, without being too doom-and-gloom about it, and perhaps this is because of the election going on, it does feel like there is a greater trend going on of internet users stepping away from social media.
There's no easy way to divert this weariness back to specialized forums a la the 00's or 90's, though, which is probably where everything should be for the internet to remain useful. This is exacerbated by the fact that 85% or so of internet traffic is phones, resulting in discussions being comprised of back-and-forth thumbtap-quality posts that nobody (including the senders) really seems to care about. It's also exacerbated by the fact that search engines cannot seem to index traditional message boards or wordpresses etc. properly; there are too many of them nowadays to navigate (most being identical templates like vbulletin).
On the other hand, the smartphone has enhanced the culture of watching TV and movies at home. It is acceptable etiquette in my house for any viewer to pause the show and read out the results of a web search about the writer, director, plot, history, concepts, etc. related to the flick at hand.
Oof, you consider that an enhancement? If anyone paused something we were watching to read something off a web page, I'd lose my patience real fast.
My partner is often on her phone intermittently while we're watching something together, and even that bothers me. It seems quite sad to me that people can't put their phones down for even a half hour to watch an episode of a sitcom.
If the claim that the blogosphere is dying is true, does that imply the public intellectual commons is dying too? I suspect that while the cosyweb is more pleasant for most, this retreat might hinder vital testing and cross-pollination of ideas, and make it much harder for people to polarize into being intellectually active. For example, I've never been an active participant on ribbonfarm, but Rao's writing has made me a little smarter and inclined towards certain vectors of thought. And you can see ripples of his work in later writing by others.
What a shame it would be for this culture to be lost; while there's a lot of dross in the blogosphere, I don't know if the brightest jewels will still be possible in a future system of local, private, transient clusters of thought.
I would say it's dead. Killed by a change in cultural attitude to one that sees an opposing idea as a declaration of war. Retreat into private walled gardens seems like the only option.
This is quite sad, I've been very inspired by the writings of Artem Litvinovich [1] (although he stopped publishing 8 years ago). I inspired a lot of my research on what he did.
>Sometime in the next few months, I’ll figure out how to move it to a lower-cost archival hosting model, probably as a static non-WordPress site,
That is the part I am most interested with. I wish there is a one off payment services, for let say fixed price for 20 years where you blog and domains remains on the internet.
Very curious. I started my personal website with the rise of Hugo (which I like to call as "the new age of SSGs"). 5 years ago. Time does fly. As I look more and more into the old days of anything, It's like, things survive long enough to get popular... Then it goes back to where and how it was. It doesn't necessarily die.
I am curious if we had the expectation that if hosting and other tech became accessible, more people must've been blogging or maintaining personal websites. That is not how it works right? Pepole maintaining websites on their on were a niche in that time of the internet. And it is still a niche in this time of the internet.
Fountain pens for example was the only way to write at one point. And once ball point pens came along which is more managed, common folks went behind it. Fountain pens didn't die. It has became more luxurious or a premium item once again. It's still thriving and there is a whole new world of fountain pens if you start digging about it. Heck, new brands have emerged.
I can see the same parallels for bikes (MTB or Road Bikes etc) as well.
More people will discover blogging and the blogosphere. And some of them will go away. Some of them stays. Some lives and some dies. Just like humans, websites will live and die.
It is obviously sad when I see someone stop blogging or stop maintaining their personal website. Since I still consider myself young to the blogosphere, It's like reading up on celebrities you don't know about after their death. But it's way of life. Life of a blog.
This might seem a little odd, but I’m trying to “find my tribe” of interesting thinkers to bounce around ideas with and your comments on this thread suggest you’d have some great/thoughtful/interesting takes.
If you’re open it would be great to connect (email in my HN bio).
This is a hard journey and really one you need to go on finding people you work with. It will drive you to work with more interesting people and do harder things.
I find the Gervais Principle very illuminating but would love to hear how you turned it into career growth. Did it motivate you to indulge in Machiavellian scheming and join the ranks of the Sociopaths? Or let you make peace with a fate among the Clueless?
I always thought Venkatesh is often guilty of shaping the reality to fit the narrative of the current post, which often is quite random and possibly even contradicts all his other posts. This is also the case here.
Unfortunately, I do share the suspicion that a lot of good things I am very much used to were sponsored by ZIRP and soon it will crash really, really hard. This thought makes me anxious, I really don't like it, but I do agree that the culture of open source, and free web, and all these things was a fleeting phenomenon. Some of it is already dead, some will die soon. But I don't believe it applies to blogging.
I mean, fine, guy wants to retire. And it "coincides" with his 50th birthday (that's a magical coincidence for sure!) Just admit it's just about you, you are tired of doing what you did for 17 years. It's ok. But you weren't the only blogger, and everyone else isn't retiring together with you. Heck, I bet there is some new blogger writing his first post right now. I don't know if I'll like his posts as much as I liked some of yours, but I'm pretty sure life goes on without you, whether you like it or not (yeah, I know, I also don't really like the idea that life will go on without me!) Blogging is just one of the formats of how people express themselves, and while today there are many alternative formats that weren't really an option, say, 20 years ago, you cannot replace all of blogposts with a YouTube video or a TikTok. You can replace some, sure. Which isn't a bad thing either, it just means there now is a media that suits that type of content better.
Also, that warning about your substack not being a blog... But it is. A different kind of blog, maybe, but let's not pretend words mean anything more than they do. Even a telegram channel with lengthy posts is pretty much a blog. And, BTW, I don't know if Scott Alexander is supposed to be an "old media refugee" who's posts Venkatesh doesn't read, but his content is pretty much the same as on SCX. FWIW.
Readit News
Once you have seven billion people with virtually no access control, you can't have a public blogosphere, and groups retreat to the cozyweb.
Either way, I enjoyed it while it lasted. Thanks for the Office series!
https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...
People forget how "tightened up" the web is nowadays, or many just aren't old enough to remember. It wasn't 10 years ago that Fox News would archive full, uncensored ISIS videos on their website - which is kind of insane, when you think about it.
Average age of first phone ownership is really young these days, which is arguably the #1 factor in everything online becoming a closed system for sheep.
On the other hand, no parents want their 11-year-old wandering into videos of hostages being burned alive. Or getting solicited for photos etc. So the internet is kind of dying for the sake of real life.
You can always search old blogspots. https://www.searchblogspot.com
Why can’t you? There’s a logical leap in this statement I don’t follow.
Dead Comment
> "This blog was sponsored by ZIRP. The future historians who dive into these archives for archaeological research will likely be economic rather than cultural historians, trying to reconstruct the play-by-play impact of ZIRP. Many of the big hits of this blog, such as The Premium Mediocre Life of Maya Millennial, and The Locust Economy (a forgotten hit from 2013) had ZIRPy subtexts."
I think the author might he referring to their own blog (ribbonfarm) as a ZIRP phenomenon, not the whole blogosphere.
https://www.ycombinator.com/library/LC-what-is-zirp-and-how-...
And in that same way, no longer do people have to ramble on into the aether in blog form to work through some shit. Now they can do that with ChatGPT and actually get responses to their thoughts in real time. And most of the time it's agreeable in tone.
Tech continues to change the world.
Maybe that isn't what is contributing to this particular blog dying, but I bet it's contributing to the larger community of blogs dying, which has probably created some inertia.
But in general, without being too doom-and-gloom about it, and perhaps this is because of the election going on, it does feel like there is a greater trend going on of internet users stepping away from social media.
There's no easy way to divert this weariness back to specialized forums a la the 00's or 90's, though, which is probably where everything should be for the internet to remain useful. This is exacerbated by the fact that 85% or so of internet traffic is phones, resulting in discussions being comprised of back-and-forth thumbtap-quality posts that nobody (including the senders) really seems to care about. It's also exacerbated by the fact that search engines cannot seem to index traditional message boards or wordpresses etc. properly; there are too many of them nowadays to navigate (most being identical templates like vbulletin).
My partner is often on her phone intermittently while we're watching something together, and even that bothers me. It seems quite sad to me that people can't put their phones down for even a half hour to watch an episode of a sitcom.
The Guinness Book of Records was started because of a pub argument whose participants lacked a good reference to settle the dispute.
What a shame it would be for this culture to be lost; while there's a lot of dross in the blogosphere, I don't know if the brightest jewels will still be possible in a future system of local, private, transient clusters of thought.
https://www.ribbonfarm.com/author/artem/
That is the part I am most interested with. I wish there is a one off payment services, for let say fixed price for 20 years where you blog and domains remains on the internet.
I am curious if we had the expectation that if hosting and other tech became accessible, more people must've been blogging or maintaining personal websites. That is not how it works right? Pepole maintaining websites on their on were a niche in that time of the internet. And it is still a niche in this time of the internet.
Fountain pens for example was the only way to write at one point. And once ball point pens came along which is more managed, common folks went behind it. Fountain pens didn't die. It has became more luxurious or a premium item once again. It's still thriving and there is a whole new world of fountain pens if you start digging about it. Heck, new brands have emerged.
I can see the same parallels for bikes (MTB or Road Bikes etc) as well.
More people will discover blogging and the blogosphere. And some of them will go away. Some of them stays. Some lives and some dies. Just like humans, websites will live and die.
It is obviously sad when I see someone stop blogging or stop maintaining their personal website. Since I still consider myself young to the blogosphere, It's like reading up on celebrities you don't know about after their death. But it's way of life. Life of a blog.
If you’re open it would be great to connect (email in my HN bio).
What is it that you think you are missing?
This is the primary way to be promoted and seen as “part of the next level” in larger organizations.
Unfortunately, I do share the suspicion that a lot of good things I am very much used to were sponsored by ZIRP and soon it will crash really, really hard. This thought makes me anxious, I really don't like it, but I do agree that the culture of open source, and free web, and all these things was a fleeting phenomenon. Some of it is already dead, some will die soon. But I don't believe it applies to blogging.
I mean, fine, guy wants to retire. And it "coincides" with his 50th birthday (that's a magical coincidence for sure!) Just admit it's just about you, you are tired of doing what you did for 17 years. It's ok. But you weren't the only blogger, and everyone else isn't retiring together with you. Heck, I bet there is some new blogger writing his first post right now. I don't know if I'll like his posts as much as I liked some of yours, but I'm pretty sure life goes on without you, whether you like it or not (yeah, I know, I also don't really like the idea that life will go on without me!) Blogging is just one of the formats of how people express themselves, and while today there are many alternative formats that weren't really an option, say, 20 years ago, you cannot replace all of blogposts with a YouTube video or a TikTok. You can replace some, sure. Which isn't a bad thing either, it just means there now is a media that suits that type of content better.
Also, that warning about your substack not being a blog... But it is. A different kind of blog, maybe, but let's not pretend words mean anything more than they do. Even a telegram channel with lengthy posts is pretty much a blog. And, BTW, I don't know if Scott Alexander is supposed to be an "old media refugee" who's posts Venkatesh doesn't read, but his content is pretty much the same as on SCX. FWIW.