As I type out these words, it’s been more than two weeks since I last published in this space. It’s crazy to think it wasn’t all that long ago that I was blogging daily on Beyond the Rhetoric. Okay, maybe it was a bit longer ago than my perception of time leads me to believe. Even so, I see this as part of an ongoing trend and a question that we writerly types ask at least every couple of years: Is blogging dead?
Is blogging no longer relevant? Has blogging become a waste of time and effort to keep plugging away with these words on the internet? If a blog post is published in some quiet corner of the web and no one is around to read it, did anyone even write it? After some brief discussions with other blogger-type people, I’ve come to a couple of intersecting conclusions for why “the state of the blog” is where it is in 2022.
Growing Availability of Other Platforms and Formats
People use what they have available to them. Before we had the internet, if you wanted to know something, maybe you went to the public library and thumbed through an encyclopedia. When I first started writing online in 1999, I distributed my articles (I didn’t know the word “blog” yet) via email, switching over to Geocities shortly thereafter. And then, when I launched Beyond the Rhetoric in 2006, I first used the free blogging software on GoDaddy before migrating to WordPress.
Blogging may not have been “new” in 2006, but blogs were one of the main ways for an average person to reach a potentially bigger audience on the internet. It was the platform for those of us who weren’t in newspapers, magazines and TV shows. But, we’re not in 2006 anymore, are we?
Micro-Blogging on Instagram
We could talk about the rise in social media in general — remember when “social networking” was the preferred term? — particularly when it comes to apps like TikTok. For a lot of us, Instagram has quickly grown into the social elephant in the proverbial room.
Speaking for myself, I don’t review nearly as many restaurants on Beyond the Rhetoric today as I have in the past. However, I am sharing a lot of “mini reviews” in the way of Instagram posts. Here’s a recent example with Wild Flour Pizza in Burnaby. Microblogging is very much a thing and Instagram captions are a perfect place to do that… though I’m not sure how many people actually read the captions all the way through.
Video-Blogging on YouTube
If reading an Instagram caption is too much work, there’s always video. And in the case of YouTube, there’s some version of video-blogging. Or “vlogging,” which is already becoming a bit of a passé term.
For a period of over a year, I shared weekly vlogs on YouTube. That has slowed down considerably for me. Even so, YouTube is still as big as it has ever been. Lots of people aspire to be YouTube influencers and celebrities, though many prefer to be called content creators. Whatever the term, there’s a reason why YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine. And it’s a great way to reach new and bigger audiences.
It’s All Talk on Podcasts
Another area where I’ve dabbled, admittedly in a much more limited way, is with podcasting. I still remember when you used to download podcasts to your computer and sync them with your iPod using the iTunes desktop software. These days, there are tons of apps — Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and so on — where you can subscribe to as many podcasts as you like, including mine (if you feel so inclined).
In a wider culture where it seems like shorter and shorter-form media is prevailing, the hour-long podcast interview format (or longer) has carved out an interesting niche. None of my episodes are an hour. None of them are interviews either, so maybe there’s that. Either way, podcasts have re-emerged as another way to connect with people, share your stories and, for better or worse, exert some level of influence.
The point is that, compared to only a few years ago, potential bloggers have a lot more options when it comes to sharing their thoughts and reaching new readers (or viewers or listeners). But, there’s another overlapping trend at play too.
Blogging Is Dead Because People Don’t Read
I don’t need to tell you that our attention spans are getting shorter. Chances are that the death spiral of social media algorithms have something to do with that, as we seek out faster and more pronounced hits of dopamine. Short form video, like TikTok and Instagram Reels, is huge. So much so that a 15-second video is probably too long and you’re going to skip it.
And since watching 9-second video requires less effort (and delivers that dopamine more quickly), people have become less inclined to read even a few hundred words. I know I’m as guilty of this as anyone. This blog post you’re reading, if you’re reading it, is about 1,100 words. Based on an average reading speed, that should take about 8 minutes. Who has that kind of time?
We’ve become a culture that prefers video over the written word. We’ll binge-watch a season of Stranger Things for hours, but generally won’t devote the same kind of time to a book. Americans are reading about 30% fewer books than they did 20 years ago. It’s not just adults; children are reading less than ever too. The same trend surely applies to words on the internet too.
If people aren’t reading books, they’re probably not as interested in reading blog posts either. Just show me the YouTube video instead. Better still, send me the 6-second TikTok video. TL;DR and all that.
On the Future of Beyond the Rhetoric
So, what’s the natural conclusion here? Is blogging dead? Honestly, I feel like we’re arriving at the same conclusion we’ve always had when we asked that question. It’s not that blogging is dead, per se; it’s that it keeps taking on different forms. We just may or may not use that exact word anymore, perhaps preferring “content creator” in a more general sense. Remember when it was only blogging if you published immediately after writing it? These days, just about everything is scheduled, curated, edited, filtered or planned in advance.
As far as the future of this blog is concerned, I’ll still be here. I just might not be around as much as before. Curiously, while I’ve written fewer blog posts this year, overall traffic to the site is up. It’s mostly people looking up my Grammar 101 posts. What this means is that people still search for information on the internet (duh), and blogs can continue to answer those queries… even if there’s already a YouTube video or podcast episode on the topic.
Well, I read the whole thing. On the consumption side, I find I read faster than most people can talk, so I prefer to consume that way as it’s faster than video or podcasts full of ‘Umms’ and “Aww”s. On the creation side, I enjoy the act of writing prose more than video creation of photography. I guess I wish it was 2006 again…
It was a simpler time, perhaps.
Necropost! (Hey, it was on the front page…looks like this post is right!)
I won’t dispute your claim that people are reading less, but I don’t think it’s the reason for this:
>So much so that a 15-second video is probably too long and you’re going to skip it.
You skip a 15-second video because the interface that delivered it to you likely served it randomly. If I was looking at a list of 15-second videos and I selected that one, I’d watch the whole thing (just like you mentioned having the patience to binge a show *I selected* on Netflix). Sites like TikTok don’t work that way though. They give you the video first, and THEN you decide if you want to keep watching it. This is why I avoid sites use of this new Tinder-style navigation. *Skipping quickly is rational when you’re using skipping as navigation.*
It’s really sad what it’s come to. People don’t love these platforms, they just want a way to curate all the things coming from their friends and the media they enjoy. RSS EXISTS! and does that perfectly. Yet we outsource it to these sites, because they have the audience.
The other sad thing is that people use social networks functionally as mini blogs. And these are the worst platforms to do so on! Even ten years ago someone could have a much better blog on Tumblr than Facebook, but yet FB still dominates.
Another factor you haven’t mentioned: SEO. The sites optimizing their posts to get top ranking are most likely companies with budgets and a full-time marketing pro. So it has become much harder to get traffic from search.
And the Google algorithm seems to get worse every day. Used to be I could find nearly anything. Now I run 3-4 searches a day that don’t result in my answer, or I have to reword numerous times. Or maybe we really ARE feeling the loss of all those blogs that have shut down, as results tend to be the same listicles or basic how-tos over and over!
Well this has gotten long…that’s what happens when a girl stops blogging. Gotta put all these thoughts somewhere!