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Comment by MuffinFlavored | Hacker News Reader

I'm trying to understand (as a dev) if there is something "wrong with me" for not wanting to have my own blog. Where do people get the "entitlement" (I mean that in the best way possible) to share with other people/assume other people care what they are working on? It feels like a competition sometimes. "I need to work on something as cool as possible so I'll get some likes/impressions on my blog".

Collaboration is obviously cool and only works with making it all public, I just don't know where "I'm doing this because I think it's cool" and "I'm going to put effort in to share it with others to get reactions"

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I have a blog, but I mostly assume people _don't_ care what I'm doing or thinking. Some of my posts have probably never been read by anybody. I still personally find it worthwhile for a few reasons:

- The mere possibility that someone will see it pushes me to put more thought and effort into what I write. Sometimes this reveals weaknesses in my ideas that I would have glossed over if I were just writing private notes for myself; sometimes it leads me to actually change my opinions. It also means the blog posts are easier for me to understand / get value out of than notes are if I come back and reread them years later.

- It creates opportunities for people to connect with me which can pay off at unexpected times. Occasionally people have reached out to me to say a post helped them or resonated with them, or to give a thoughtful reply or ask a question. Those sorts of interactions are really satisfying even if they're rare. (One time, I was interviewing for a dev job and the interviewer asked a question about a post I'd written on the philosophy of John Rawls, and how it could connect to software engineering. I found that absolutely delightful.)

- It's just nice to have an outlet when I feel like writing about something.

I don't have a blog myself but am this close to creating one.

Some guy said that it's a progression.

You start using the web by being a casual reader. At some point you get more comfortable in public spaces and start replying small comments like you would reply to someone afk.

Then you start reading more and more about specific subjects, amassing knowledge, and your replies have more content. They start being organized. They have a structure, to guide future readers and show them how you came up with your conclusion. They have links to sources. They leave open doors for the parts you don't know.

Then you start writing more and more comments, with more and more content, as a result of your experience.

Then comes a moment where you realize you're going to write the same thing for the nth time, and being a good engineer with a focus on DRY, you want to write your thoughts once and for all and link to it every time. This is the moment you start writing a blog that you actually maintain: you write not because you feel the need to write more, but because you want to write less and direct people to it rather than repeating yourself.

I don't think there's something wrong with you. I also think there's nothing wrong with people sharing _interesting_ stuff, whether they do it ultimately for shallow likes or for ... you know... just sharing _interesting_ stuff.

On a side note, I get the "entitlement" from nobody. I take it. I also mean that in the best way possible. Nobody's asking for my software, my (future) articles, my point of view, etc. Still, I make stuff and sometimes share stuff. I think it can be a net value for some people (definitely not for everyone). This is only the reasoning behind it, the main motivator was me realizing I matter as a human being and I have only one life to live. I learned that because of experiencing a 'dark night of the soul' a couple of years back. Luckily I got through. And to be honest, if it wasn't for the internet - made up of personal websites and real people sharing their own experience on forums - that taught me everything there is to know about Cluster B disordered personalities (just an example, cough nothing personal cough), I don't think I would be sitting here typing this lengthy response.

I realized I can not sit back, enjoy the decline of the internet, and only complain about it. I would love to see the web have a lot of personal websites and blogs about every kind of subject, so I started to build a website software. The web/internet, and all the information shared and made easily accessible, made me able to save myself. I was probably helped more by some random dude who put up a website fifteen years ago with everything he knew about certain stuff than I was helped by anything else.

Odd take. If you spend several hours figuring something out, it’s quite neighborly to write it up for the next person. “Shoulders of giants” and all that.

I’m certainly grateful for their help, and even written up a few of my own.

I think the bloggers are a classic vocal minority, nothing to feel weird about.

> a classic vocal minority

Not saying you're right or wrong, but I myself don't want to look at it like it's a competition of the loudest people.

I've read so many blogs through HN over the last years, and every one of 'em had something interesting to say while also portraying something personal from the author. Whether that's a nice layout, nice color scheme, or even some nice jokes in their bio text.

To me, it can not get any more human than this. Pure individuals connecting on a world wide web. By links, by email, by RSS feeds. All without big tech.

I agree with everything you wrote — what I was trying to communicate is that there’s no shame in not feeling the urge to share as it happens to be that the vast majority of us, like the gp post, don’t but that’s not easy to see or quantify.

Aside, I almost wrote “silent majority” but that seemed like it was veering towards politics so I went with vocal minority; I suspect there is a better term out there but I didn’t find it quickly.

I admit I interpreted more in your short post than was there. People definitely should not feel shame for not feeling an urge to share!

I still encourage people to share though, because I think a lot of people would like to read personal stuff about topics that interest them. Doesn't even have to be with your name and all next to it, anonymous/pseudonymous homepages are usually possible.

Therefor I offer free websites (on a subdomain though) for people that would like to write or post photos about their hobbies. And know that there are way more possibilities to go online, just look at the OP of this thread with a nice SSG.

> I offer free websites

And I am so glad you do!

Writing my longer reply I realized that early social media is a strong counterpoint — people absolutely loved to share when the barrier to doing so was low, the platforms hadn’t been given over to commercialization, and it was less obvious that those details were going to be ingested into an advertising profile. It sounds like you offer a bit of that without the motive or intent that turned mainstream social media into what it is and I think that’s great!

Thanks!

Yeah, somewhere between the homepages and webrings of the nineties and the added social functionality of the early social media platforms. Ideally without the platforms and their incentives. The web itself is already a social platform, a social medium. No need for more layers, especially if they ultimately are against my interests. I think RSS still holds the potential to connect individual websites/people, albeit in a slightly (or maybe even fundamental?) different way than the social media platforms do.

Question: what would be your number one topic/subject to blog about, other than anything tech related?

I have no idea! I tend to be more interested in replying than writing top level comments these days.

"WWW - let's share what we know"

Und die gedanken sind frei!

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