Quote from: TDoS on Jun 27, 2024, 03:44 PMCool job by the way, old computer stuff.
It is old stuff, part of a bygone era when the internet still held the promise of an open forum of communication where anyone could set up theit own Blog or Webzine and many different ideas and perspectives would be available to read and participate in.
Remember the early days of Blogging, wher Bloggers actually became semi-famous and had lots of readers on many different topics? The blog hosting services were free and there was minimal advertizing on the header or sidebar. On the Solstice, I went to check George Mobus' old blog, Question Everything. A few years back he cut down from about twice a month to 4 times/year, on the solstice and equinox. His last blog was Spring 2021.
Ugo Bardi ran Cassandra's Legacy until 2023. He got targeted by TPTB and moved to open the Seneca Effect.
On March 2, 2011, I started the blog that I titled "Cassandra's Legacy." 10 years later, the blog had accumulated 974 posts, 332 followers, and more than 5 million visualizations (5289.929). Recently, the blog had stabilized at around 2,000-3,000 views per day. It is now moving to a different site with a different title: "The Seneca Effect"
The reasons for this move are not because I wanted to. I was forced to change. Cassandra was a small blog, by all means, but I always had the sensation that it was not without an impact on the nebulous constellation of the people, high up, whom we call "the powers that be" (the PTBs).
Seneca Effect has a Paywall. I love Ugo, but sorry I don't do paywalls. Individually they aren't much, but the whole beauty was in being able to go to many different blogs getting different perspectives. Ugo wants $6/mo for just basic membership. $55/year which is a better deal. Howwever, for this price I could subscribe to the NYT, Bloomberg or the WSJ, which would provide a whole lot more content than Ugo generates. Not that I think they're better sources quality wise, just they provide a whole lot more stuff. If I was to start paying, who to use my limited funds on? The Economist? Der Spiegel? Scientific American? I can't pick just a couple, so I don't buy any of them. Which sorely limits what is available to read anymore.
The advertizing with the popups, the paywalls, and targeting by TPTB did plenty of damage to blogging as a medium, but that wasn't the end of the problems. You also had the extremists, remeember the Gates of Vienna blog? The Norwegian shooter who mowed down a few hundred kids was a poster on that blog, which spewed Nazi rhetoric out like candy on Halloween.
Then of course the degeneration of the Commentariat on any blog with worthwhile information that did not follow the accepted narrative of TPTB, loading up with trolls of all kinds, some paid by goobermint, others who were just hobbyists who would flood the commentary with disinformation and ad hom attacks. Most bloggers would start out welcoming the idea of free speech, but it didn't take long for everyone to start moderating and removing comments. For a long time I operated by fighting fire with fire, getting into long Napalm Contests, where the commentary would escalate up in insult level and scatological language to thermonuclear levels. It was fun in a way,but it undermined any serious attempt at discussion and drove away the "nice" people who find such stuff appalling. So I finally joined the crowd and started axing posts and banning members who were persistent jackasses.
In any event, blogs are an anachronism now and so are forums. Social Media is the meme now, but that is little more than a popularity contest with trivial content. The MSM sites are just propaganda organs for TPTB. Scientifically oriented sites are loaded with techno-hopium, including even the most ecologically and environmentally aware ones. There are ZERO websites where you can engage in free and open discussion with intelligent and well informed people. The internet has morphed into strictly an entertainment and sales medium, tightly controlled by a few corporations that closely monitor all the traffic and marginalize anything that doesn't fit the narrative of perpetual growth and the myths of democracy, free markets and capitalism.
In this ocean of enshittification, the Diner floats along like a relic from another time when the Internet held promise and a few people could gather together to talk about the day's events. What people used to do before that in bars and barber shops and beauty parlors. Those places are all gone now also.
Once upon a time there was Camelot. Now there are only ruins and recollections of what might have been.
RE