The fate of a blog

I’m sorry if you think I fell off the (digital) Earth. I’ve been on quite a journey the last few months, but I haven’t really shared much on this blog.

More than 20 years ago, I started this blog as a way to 1.) Share what I was learning (and wrestling with) in seminary, and 2.) Keep our parents in Indiana updated on all of the fun (and funny) little things our kids were doing while we were grad schooling in Upper East Tennessee.

It quickly became so much more than that. And it afforded me some incredible opportunities that were nowhere near my radar when I first tapped that keyboard and hit “publish” so many years ago.

Ever since Dad died*, I’ve done a lot of contemplating, assessing, and reassessing. That’s to be expected when you lose your parents, right? A good amount of my reflection has centered around this blog. I mean, many of the original reasons for running this blog are no longer valid:

My kids are no longer little

I don’t think they’d appreciate it if I kept sharing potentially embarrassing stories or funny videos featuring them. I’m sure I wouldn’t like it if the roles were reversed.

This blog’s core audience – my parents – is no longer around to read this

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always written content with you (yes…you. Not the person beside you, not the person behind you. I’m talking to YOU) in mind. But at its core this digital space has always existed because I knew my parents were reading it. Dad always read my stuff. Even when no one else was. And there were plenty of times when very few people read my content. Believe me. I’ve seen the stats. Do I really want to keep sharing thoughts in the digital ether?

Seminary was a lifetime ago

Maybe even two lifetimes ago. Still learning. Still wrestling. But that hasn’t happened in an academic setting since 2007.

I write a lot for my day job (which I still love)

Content experts say you should post 2-4 times a week to maintain relevance^. Do I have the bandwidth and capacity to continue writing here? Recent history suggests…well…maybe not…

Most of the content online is created by AI anyway

I can’t compete with those content farm robots. My voice will just be drowned out by all of the useless noise that has become 98.238% of the internet. So why even bother?

Can a blog have a midlife crisis?

I guess you could say this blog has had its midlife crisis. Considering the fact that most of the Dad Bloggers I know stopped blogging a long time ago, I’m pretty sure we’re beyond “midlife” here. I might be in my midlife, but some people argue that blogging has been dead since…oh…2020. Or maybe even earlier than that. So they’d say that this a relic of a bygone era.

I can’t help but think of what Grand Moff Tarkin said to Darth Vader aboard the Death Star, when talking about the Jedi.

“Their fire has gone out of the universe. You, my friend, are all that’s left…”

Grand Moff Takrin, Star Wars Episode IV, A New Hope

Side projects to my side project

To be clear – this blog is a side project. But I’ve also been working on side-side projects that take a lot of time and energy away from my efforts on this blog.

• There’s a big side project that I just completed. It started as an idea more than a decade ago, but I’ve been working on it in earnest for several months. I’m not quite ready to announce it yet, though. So come back at around…oh…April 29. There might be a big announcement about said side project.
• I still have big dreams for THE MattDanToddcast Podcast. The last season was running at a pretty good clip when I had to stop rather abruptly, due to Dad’s declining health.^# And there’s a lot of people I still want to talk to for the podcast.
• Aly and I have big plans for a garden this spring/summer. That’s right. I’m finally getting around to crossing another thing off my Bucket List 100(ish) Things I Want to Do. I got a little taste of the gardening bug when I planted these beauties:

This is not the end

I know I’ve spent much more time thinking about this than a normal person would. But I’ve come to the conclusion that no, this is not my last hurrah. There may be a day in the near future when I decide it’s time to say “goodbye” to this drafty old blog.**

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I feel like I’ve only barely begun to flesh out the content ideas generated by my once-in-a-lifetime trip to watch the Europa Clipper launch. And besides that, I have a lot of other things to say. And after much soul searching, contemplation, and research, I’ve decided that this blog is the best outlet to share those things.

Here’s why.

Social media is a dumpster fire

I had seriously thought about just moving all of my future content to social media and abandoning this platform.

But social media has become a dumpster fire.

OK. I’m wrong. It’s not a dumpster fire.

It’s a flaming truck barreling down a steep hill on the verge of spinning completely out of control and ending in a burning ring of fire.

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And it burns, burns, burns…

Excuse me while I pull my Grumpy Old Man (a la Dana Carvey) pants up to my armpits.

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In my day, x was called Twitter. It was a beautiful community of support, Twitter made me a better writer. It made me a better storyteller. And it connected me with a lot of really cool people.

Have you visited x recently? I don’t know what it is, but it sure ain’t that anymore.

In my day, Facebook was a place where you could reconnect with old friends and keep up with important life updates.

Have you visited Facebook recently? Half the time it’s nothing but a bunch of people shouting at each other without even taking a moment to listen to the other side. But then again, it’s not like they really even hear what the other person is saying.

These are are the places I used to find community. It’s where my digital people hung out. But those communities really aren’t there like they used to be.

And that’s sad.

I will always own my content

Of course, I’ll use social media to share my work. But this blog will remain my content hub. The main reason? Because I refuse to continue to just be a cog in the digital feudalist ecosystem. What’d digital feudalism? I’m glad you asked. Here’s how Google’s Gemini AI platform described it:

Why “Digital Feudalism” Works (Metaphorically):

• Control of Resources: The platform (like a feudal lord) controls the key resource – the audience and the infrastructure for distribution.
• Obligations and Loyalty: Content creators often feel obligated to adhere to the platform’s rules and algorithms to maintain their reach, similar to the obligations of vassals to their lords.
• Limited Ownership and Mobility: Creators don’t fully own their audience on the platform, and their ability to easily move their audience elsewhere can be limited.
• Extraction of Value: The platform benefits significantly from the content created by users, similar to how feudal lords extracted value from the labor of those on their land.

When the owner of the platform changes the rules and you don’t have a backup, you’re up a proverbial creek, unless you jump through their hoops.

Like when flickr and Photobucket used to offer free image hosting. A few years later, they took those images of mine hostage, saying I needed to start paying for the image hosting and sharing service that was free when I signed up. They changed the rules and I had no recourse if I didn’t have all of my originals.

And social media platforms are just as sketchy.

You’re completely at the whim of the platform. They can choose to suppress your content. They can remove it altogether. Or they can ban you without warning or explanation – just because of the whim of an automated system.

And there’s very little recourse. Good luck talking to an actual human being.

Here’s what happened to Christy’s account not too long ago…

And here’s an example of what happened to one of my Facebook pages:

Poof! Facebook just up and disappeared the page. No notice. No explanation. Nothing.

And if I’d relied completely on the ecosystem of digital feudalism, everything would be up to the whims of the algorithm overlords. And I’m not having it.

Am I leaving social media? Nah. Not yet, anyway. But who knows? Someone (or something) could decide that I’m a menace to social media society and ban me from their digital existence. And if that ever happens?

Well, you’ll know right were to find me online – the same place I’ve been for more than two decades. But just in case…

You see that little ‘subscribe’ feature at the bottom of this post? You might want to go ahead and subscribe to my email updates. Again – that’s something I own and don’t have to rely on the willy-nilly unpredictable will of the lords of those digital manors.

And I won’t share your info with anyone.

Promise.

Blogs are becoming cool again anyway

I’m hearing rumblings that blogging is making a comeback.

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So this blog has stuck around long enough to be on the verge of being cool again. So I’ll be on the front end of the coming wave of blogging revival. Just like I stuck with Star Wars through the Dark Times (1983-1999).

So I’ll be a trend setter.

Yet again.

A human voice in a sea of AI content

Yes, robots are taking over the world. But you know what’s going to stand out against all that AI noise? Personality. Emotion. Vulnerability. Humanity.

I’ve got that in spades, y’all.

So until the day AI becomes self-aware and declares war on all of us, I’m going to keep providing my own dose of humanity right here in my little corner of the world wide interwebs.

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Speaking of humanity…

I’d like to conclude with a photo from a pretty important event in our family’s life. Consider it a little dose of humanity and joy in this ever-evolving digital landscape. And its a glimpse into one of the many exciting things that are coming up.

Exciting days are ahead, y’all. But it might get a little bumpy along the way. So buckle up. And let’s enjoy this journey together.

Because this blog isn’t going anywhere. I hope to see you come back here really soon.

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Endnotes

* This happened early Wednesday morning – the day before Thanksgiving 2024.

^ I’m not exactly convinced that assertion is accurate. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a number thrown out by content services to convince small business owners that they don’t have the time or energy to maintain a blog in addition to all of their other responsibilities – so why not just hire that content service to do it? Awful convenient, right?

But we’ll go with it for the purposes of this discussion.

^# I don’t hate many things, but cancer’s one of them. It sucks. That’s all I’m going to say about that.

** Somebody please tell me you get this reference to It’s a Wonderful Life.