Where Do I Live Online?
Where the heck is my online presence these days? I’ve barely posted anything online in YEARS, and I’m not just talking about this blog. I largely blame the enshitification of the internet caused by social media.
The failed era of social media usage #
I’d say most of the social media platforms I’ve used in the last decade or more are overall a failed experiment. For example, Facebook was fun at first. Wow, I feel old saying that. It was actually useful for finding out what old friends were doing. Then it became a cesspool of useless time wasting that spread misinformation, encouraged bad behavior and radicalized people I once knew. All that increased “engagement” (fear, hatred, conspiracy) to sell crap. I tried to close that account once, but realized I needed it to connect with new people I met while traveling and living abroad, both using Facebook and because they control WhatsApp. Now it’s a ghost town that I almost never check or use.
Twitter was fun - in the way that things that you know are bad for you like drinking and smoking are fun. But it had some value for public discourse, and for me it was a way to keep up with tech stuff from colleagues. Then it became X so a manbaby could live out his fantasy of forcing the world to listen to him all the time. Now it’s very nearly worthless and I did finally close my account sometime this year.
Anyway, all that to say I’d like to return to actually posting things online, just not on any “platform” that intends to capture all the value of it for themselves and eventually enshitify it all before it fades to oblivion. I could just switch to posting stuff on Bluesky, which at least seems to be starting with what seem some good intentions. Or I could use Threads or Instagram, but that’s really just Facebook / Meta again. Or Mastodon, which has all warm fuzzy idealism you could ask for, it’s just not the most fun and seems like it will always remain somewhat niche.
So why not just posting here on my blog again? #
Duh obviously, as my teenage daughter would say, since I’m writing this here on my blog now. Honestly, I wish I’d spent more time writing and building here instead of the time I did spend on those social media platforms. What could be better than my own website where I control all the content and can do whatever I want without anybody else controlling what I write or see? I’ll just go ahead and start a new post - oh wait, I haven’t touched this thing in years, octopress looks like it stopped developing in 2015, but it should still run, right? I’ll just update a few things
% bundle install
rbenv: version `2.2.3' is not installed
Oh, I’ll update to use a newer version of Ruby, not 3.x, just a newer 2.x so I don’t have to worry about language breaking changes
% bundle install
....
Reason: tried: '/opt/homebrew/opt/openssl@1.1/lib/libssl.1.1.dylib'
Oh yeah, I remember something about openssl versioning getting confusing for older rubies. Resolve that, now a compiled YAML library won’t install? OK I give up, let’s convert this to a modern and supported thing. I’ve done this upgrade cycle at least a couple times in the past. I don’t even remember how long ago I switched from wordpress to octopress, don’t seem to have blogged about it. But the wayback machine has a copy if I really want to relive that wordpress era.
OK, now I remember part of why I let myself get captured by those damned social media platforms: maintaining your own site is a total PITA (pain in the ass). Even when you’re generating a static site. Don’t even get me started on the work of finding consistent hosting. But let’s face it, I’m a software developer, and maybe half of the reason I’ve had this damned blog is to prove to potential employers that I have a web presence and technical history that’s more than just a resume. Definitely can see a correlation to when I would post stuff, and when I was looking for a new job.
So I’ll suck it up, convert this stupid thing to using Hugo (that seems to be the most commonly used static site generator for a while now, right?), find a better way to host it than a seriously out of date hosted linux server on Digital Ocean that probably has been hacked at this point and I shouldn’t be paying $8 a month for, and get posting again. At least until some dependency or config change drives me nuts. Or I lose interest in writing things that basically go into a void that nobody else reads. Or until I get a new job and no longer care that it’s embarrassing to link to a dead website from my resume. Yeah, I’m committed
Using my own blog again seems more worth it than ever #
The process of doing this conversion is the first time in years I’ve even looked back on what I’ve written, and some of it is slightly lame, a lot of it pretty useless. However, overall, the biggest benefit I’m finding is that it brings back a lot of memories of what life was like at that time and is great for comparing and reminiscing. While writing and creating things to share publicly is useful just to force me to get my thoughts somewhat coherent enough to seem worthy to share, being able to look back on my thoughts is a great way for me to see how far I’ve come. My abilities and career have improved so much since I started writing about it. Things that used to seem important now seem trivial. Even if upgrading dependencies for software just so you can keep using it will never be trivial.
In case I ever really want to reminisce, I figure I should backup the website experience, terrible styling and all, not just the text, so here’s my old blog archived created with httrack.
In the future… #
All this isn’t to say that now that I’ve got this blog thing working again I won’t be using any other place online to post content, I’m just hoping I learn my lesson and don’t treat those other walled garden platforms as something I can rely on to stay useful and archiveable. Other platforms certainly have their place. For example, discussion isn’t really something I see my own website being used for. I rarely discuss things online with people anyway, but occasionally a back and forth on a twitter post got interesting. My goal here though is to keep my own website as something that’s worth investing time and energy into that can have benefit longer than whatever the new Friendster -> MySpace -> Facebook -> Twitter -> whatever hype cycle platform ends up being that starts as useful and then enshitifies.
Now that that’s done, hopefully I’ll post soon about something more interesting than remembering I have a blog. Historically I considered this my “tech” focused blog, and http://www.mmrobins.com/ my “personal” blog, but that distinction just meant more upkeep to maintain things. So maybe I’ll post more personal stuff here too, although what personal stuff to share online is a whole other conundrum. Only time will tell, but at least the ball is rolling again.