WHO DO YOU BLOG FOR?
My thoughts on why I blog.
Earlier today I came across a since-deleted post that stirred up some drama on discovery/trending. The topic was about blogging, to put it simply. I've also been seeing bloggers post their blogging workflow, and I think the why is relevant, too.
When I first started this account, I thought to myself, "Am I a blogger now? What even is a blog?"
I googled it, as if I was asking for permission to exist in this space. The answers were vague and most results talked about your personal brand, blah blah. Social media tells us that it's more important to show off perform and "crop out the sadness*" because that's what the algorithm wants. If I wanted to write about something, it felt like it needed a clear purpose.
*I think this quote was from an episode of Portlandia.
That's what I disliked about Substack. It made me feel like I wasn't good enough, cool enough, or niche enough. I had too many interests so I couldn't fit myself into a neat box to be packaged and presented. And if you're not marketable, the algorithm ignores you, which kind of made me feel like I didn't matter.
I feel the opposite here.
Everyone's blog is so different and it reflects who they are as a person. The limitlessâ customization allows the blogger to express themselves however they want. The discovery feed also gives everyone a chance to be seen.
â Limitless if you know CSS/HTML, otherwise it's a steep learning curve.
If I don't want to see something, I hide it from my feed. But that's really rare, and other than that, I enjoy reading about people whose lives are completely different from my own, or finding out I have a lot in common with someone else. It reminds me that I'm just one out of billions of people on this planet. And stumbling upon someone's blog really feels like I've just found their little corner of the universe.
I blog for myself
I continue to customize my blog to my heart's content. I spend a lot of time poking around my site and enjoy creating moments of delight for myself. I used to write twice a month on Substack, but here, I write almost every day, and if it's not a blog post, I'm doing something else, like editing the theme or adding a new page to my About section.
Self-gratuitous? Probably. But as someone who's struggled to love themselves, I see this as an act of self-care. I've created a space where my words, my thoughts, and my ideas matter. They might not matter to you, but they matter to ME. And that's more than enough reason to write about it.
Social media has warped us all
I feel like the instant gratification of social media has given us a sense of entitlement, where we expect things to simply appear before us. We don't need to work for it; the algorithm should just know and it should just be THERE. But Bear Blog is the antithesis to that. We're bringing back searching for things, and when we can't find it, we make it ourselves! (Right??)
In the end, there isn't a clear definition of what a blog is supposed to be. Because it can be about anything, and that's the beauty of it. It's everything and it's nothing. It's a journal, it's a photo album, it's whatever youâthe makerâwant it to be.
It's your playground, so have fun with it.
I'll close with this quote from Steve of lwgrs:
I'm a strong proponent of creating something YOU would read/watch/listen to. If you're not seeing enough of what you want to read in the discover feed, make it happen yourself. Maybe that will encourage others to do the same.