[diogenes4]

1. Most people don't have anything interesting to say.

2. People who do have interesting things to say deserve to get paid for their work.

3. Other platforms (e.g. TikTok) provide a more natural medium for interaction and response.

4. If you're just aiming to write, there's always journals. I journal and I find it very satisfying.

5. Obviously, people still blog, even if the scene is dominated by capital's obsession with SEO.

[simonw]

"Most people don't have anything interesting to say."

I couldn't disagree more. People are /fascinating/.

There's definitely a skill in figuring out what you can say that's most likely to interest other people, but that's a learnable skill.

One of the skills of a great communicator is being able to help pull the interesting stuff out of people.

[theshrike79]

1. That didn't stop people blogging before :D

2. Money happened pretty much. First people started monetising their blogs, then they turned into books, which turned into multiple books and youtube channels and then it was no longer a blog and more of a company.

and additionally:

6. The younger generation is used to having their actual face plastered all over the internet and thus feel more natural making videos with their own face and voice.

--

I, and I think a good part of the HN crowd, are in the generation where we had actual friends we only knew by their handle/nickname and never saw their face unless there was a meetup of some sort and we actually went there.

For me, using my own face, or even name, to present any sort of content just feels wrong in a visceral way.

[pixl97]

I think you missed #3 when commenting on #1

People didn't have much interesting to say before, but they didn't have much else to do. Now with #3, other platforms, they spend a lot of time on those other places writing short quips all day.

[crawancon]

6. Entities on the internet either copy your work and claim credit, harass you because of your opinions, or use your works against you(mining, social engineering, marketing).

[izzydata]

There is no way to know what people will find interesting. There is a healthy gap between someones content being absolutely not worth reading and being professional. I think more people should have hobbies and they should write about their experiences even without it necessarily being interesting. I also don't think it needs to be about making money. Once you start trying to get paid for your hobbies it becomes work and not fun.

With an online blog rather than an offline journal you can easily share it with friends. I think the main difference here between TikTok and other huge social media is that less is more. I don't see much point in a million anonymous strangers looking at my posts. I don't think there is anything "natural" about these huge social media platforms. This kind of socialization feels very unnatural to me. Mostly do to the parasocial relationships that occur from the million people to one person style interactions.