Journaling in the age of Articlemaxxing

Or "How I miss the innocent days of Livejournal"..

When did writing online become driven by farming success course-slop?

Why does everyone want to "help me grow", so long as I sign up to an online program or join a paid membership tier? Why does Substack's notes feed look and read with exactly the same level of engagement farming as Crypto Twitter did during the NFT and meme coin heydays?

There was a point in time where Medium became overrun with Listicles, posts on how to make money writing, and why no-one is reading your articles. Substack suffers from the same ailments.

That is, if you take the algorithm at face value, and the trending / popular posts.

Not every post needs to be a Booker Prize nomination. Sometimes you just want to get your raw thoughts down on to digital paper. I think that gets lost sometimes on these larger platforms. Polish and perfection often overshadow authentic, genuine & honest content.

Meanwhile as a reader, it would be nice to get to the bottom of a longread without hitting a sales pitch at the end, and realising the whole thing was just marketing.

Perhaps Substack and Medium are not the place for such musings? For as much as I've written fairly regularly on both platforms, I can't help but feel I am but a minnow in their mighty oceans, regardless of the content I put out. Whether it was about a project of mine, an opinion piece or just thoughts on a current event.

So.. this brings me here.. to a blog in my pocket. A pocket for those unpolished thoughts and raw scribbles.

You know, like Journaling used to be.