A Blog Entering Adulthood

I bought this domain name on 7 April 2000, so in few days it’s been nineteen years since I first began to publish myself online. Much has change during these years, both to me and the Internet. When I undertook blogging, people were talking about the blogosphere as this new, radical thing that would rock the balance of power and enable just about anyone to become a citizen journalist. That’s a great thought, but we have since learned that it also meant mass-production of fake news by hostile regimes.

Russia has been particularly successful at fake news, and has managed to undermine a united Europe by unleashing its army of paid trolls in order to help the Kremlin-friendly and EU-bashing populists on the far right. So, now we have Brexit and Russian agencies actively backing Trump, Assange, Le Pen, Orbán, Salvini, Wilders, Farage, et cetera.

Recent studies show that people express great difficulties at distinguishing fake news and propaganda from genuine criticism of the political elite and mainstream media. None of this is getting better by the lack of funding for journalism and the paywalls newspaper set up in a desperate attempt to keep the few subscribers they have left.

The past nineteen years has also changed me. When I browse through my archive, I can see how I was an angry activist, sometimes fuelled by a childish assumption that political opponents had evil intent. I suppose everyone goes through stages in their life they later feel embarrassed about. There are quite a few diary entries I now wish I hadn’t written, but I made a decision many years ago not to delete anything unless it was required by law.

This relates back to the first issue. Fake news thrive on lack of criticism of one’s sources. Blogs like this one is an example of the importance of that. What you read on blogs is mostly subjective opinions and amateur analyses. Furthermore, the timestamp gives an indication of when this opinion was held and under what circumstances it was written. The Internet has a very short use-by date—on some social media it’s a matter of minutes.

No one talks about the blogosphere any more. Most of the professional blogs from a decade ago are now either retired or mainstream newspapers in their own right—even the crazy zealots have news agencies.

As this website enters its twentieth year, I’m thinking about what to do next. I’m not bothered with the fashionable, so I’ll continue to post entries in my diary. But as regular readers might have noticed, I’m not as productive as I used to be. That’s on purpose. I’m too old to be driven by emotional outbursts, and I no longer delude myself into thinking that blogging changes anything. I’ll continue, but only because it soothes me to record my thoughts on current affairs, daily life, and fine arts. Entries will be fewer and at slow pace, but hopefully they will be of noteworthy quality.