"If I could ever express myself in 140 characters, I wouldn't write blogs", I claimed confidently in 2009 when we were talking about a rising social media platform called "Twitter". I had been writing about the stuff that excite me, my feelings and daily adventures right here in this blog since 2008. And this place wasn't even my first blog, I had a prior blog I was overly expressive about my angst against the world, a blog I put offline later as it should be. This blog's name means "The Man Who Loves Ice Cream At The Last Day Of November", a unique name that references to one of my quirks, which is consuming cold drinks and foods even in cold seasons. It became a personal tradition for me to eat ice cream in November 30, like the mochi I ate today you see here in this post.
Back in the day, blogs had significancy. People would blog what they were passionate about, your blog would be followed by others. Your Blogspot posts would show up in Google searches, unlike the countless shopping sites you see whenever you Google something today (mind you, this was also a curse, since this could lead unpleasant folks to your posts, especially to controversial/sexual topics). If you cared about being heard, these were reasons to blog whatever in your mind.
I'd talk about what keeps me passionate here. The games I make or play, the artworks I do, the films/shows I watched, etc. Then this blog became a place I post only annually at a certain date. Why? We shifted to micro-blogging and YouTube'ing as most of the internet folk. We have been losing our span of attention. And our posts don't show up in Google searches as it used to, I guess, so why bother... It turns out I can usually express myself with few characters a tweet/skeet can hold.
Nowadays micro-blogging itself is shifting. Twitter died when it was bought by Musk, that illegitimate platform called "X" is merely built on Twitter's infrastructure and legacy. Bluesky is exponentially taking place of Twitter. Mastodon/Fediverse will not, because it's not even an entity with such an intention.
Why am I calling X an "illegitimate platform"? A legitimate platform doesn't show you an ad that directly targets another user with her handle to expose her medical record (which was accessed illegally). And many more examples! The main reason why I no longer login X is this lack of legitimacy. Second is how it became a problem that encourages toxicity and anger, let alone trying to maintain a civilized platform.
What will be the future of blogging/micro-blogging? I don't know. I hope whatever it will be, it will be sane.
Here are my Bluesky and Mastodon profiles.
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