I read your title and honestly, I think “the golden era of blogging” genuinely fits it. It was a completely different time and way of blogging that feels to not fit in anywhere now.
These days, I feel as though I’m in limbo — blogging for fun and to share what I want to share, and blogging because it’s my long-time skill and I’ve turned it into my “career” in a way (I hate calling it a “career”, because it doesn’t fit the traditional concept of a career).
Almost every time I think I may have met someone who could be akin to meeting people back then, “before”, they disappoint me in DMs. Turns out they were connecting with me to “warm me up”, basically, so turn me into a client/customer. Liking or commenting people’s posts on IG, following people back because I like their accounts, etc. — for me, it’s genuine but for them it’s a lot of, “How can I help you? :D” type ish that I want nothing to do with.
I hope I get to meet you offline one day. The current “goal” is to move out of Texas by summer 2025, and the state currently in main consideration is Illinois. I will know more by this summer. 😅 I know this is kind of random, but I thought I’d add it while I’m thinking of it. I remembered upon reading about how taboo meeting people online was…and it’s so strange to me how far we’ve come in society that meeting people online is more the norm now than it is taboo.
I don’t know if I will ever find the balance between blogging for fun and blogging for money. This is, unfortunately, what I’m good at and what fits my strengths. I like to think of myself as a nicheless rebel in that way, since I don’t stick to one niche/topic/focus and cling to golden era blogging values. I think they’re still adequate, “valuable”…personal, touchable.
I really loathe how untouchable content creators are, how there is so little 1:1 connection without payment or tons of hoops. I can’t just email a blogger or content creator I see today without running the risk of a response from someone who isn’t them. I suppose that is the price of the “creator economy”, but it still sucks. It’s still severely lacking in what I favored most about the blogging community back then: humanity.
I’m tired of bro marketing and men filling the blogosphere, of them always being quoted. I miss the community way back when that was dominated by women, where men weren’t the default people quoted so much.
It really isn’t the same, and…yeah, I miss it, too.
