Uhhhh, hello?

 *tap* *tap* *tap*.... this thing still on?

Remember when blogging felt like the wild frontier of the internet? When an RSS feed was our compass, and “new post!” was the notification equivalent of a drumroll and a sample of the oh-so-sweet dopamine bump to follow. Ah yes… those were the days. I could humbly wax poetic about manual transmissions, using public toilets, or possibly create a new list… you know, because my last list had the highest view count and engagement… gotta chase that sweet dopamine! Who knows, I might just click Refresh just onnneeee moreeee timeeee!

And then came social media.

Not that social media started because of me or anything (though clearly the universe pivoted when I logged into MySpace in 2006 with my carefully selected "Get Up Kids" song in-tow...), but honestly, it feels less like evolution and more like a tidal wave of low-rent trash that washed away entire villages of our venerable blogs. Where once we had pages full of thoughts, musings, rants, and the occasional ramble about drunk transients, brain cancer from cell phones, removing paper sticky labels from new appliances, or sub-par fast food…. Or…. how it takes precisely seventeen bookmarks to truly organize your writing life, now we have 280-character posts, shallow stories, and algorithms that decide if your brain gets seen today. (heyyy maaaan…. Got any of that… DOPAMINE?!)

Blogs were like handwritten letters to strangers… messy, heartfelt, and delightfully unoptimized for SEO. (Keywords: cool blog, funny blog, insightful blog, hilarious blog, blogs worth reading, premium blogs, booty, tatas, V8 engines, beer) Social media is like shouting into a stadium full of newly-minted 2025 Dodgers fans while someone sells ads between your sentences. Both have their place, but let’s be honest… I miss the old place where you could bury a long post under five paragraphs of weird ass observations and people would still read. You don’t see that much anymore, just rage baiting and algos tuned specifically to ruin your day… LeSigh….

I suppose there’s a kind of poetry in that… if you squint hard enough. Blogs didn’t die, they simply became a nostalgic footnote while the rest of the internet sprinted (or spiraled) past. Yet here we are, occasional survivors of the old blogosphere, still thinking that long rambling posts are often exactly what the internet NEEDS! Not because they’ll go viral, shit no, man, but because there’s joy in slowing down, in placing one word after another, and in thinking perhaps someone still out there will read it.

So here’s to the blogs that once were… to the paragraphs, to the comments with thoughtful debate, to the “I just had my third Red Bull of the morning… let me tell you why in 4 short paragraphs.” posts that inexplicably felt like confessions, and to every blogger who ever clicked that dopamine button… I mean, publish button at midnight with a wry smile and nothing but a story to tell… here’s to you, man. Or woman, if you are one.

Now please excuse me while I find memes on Reddit to repost to BoomerBook.

-Serrated