Bear Blog 1st Anniversary
I can't quite remember how I landed on Bear Blog. Maybe I wrote about it, but I'm far too lazy to check right now. I know it was a combination of a few things. Years of being part of the mainstream web finally proved too exhausting to actively pursue, which led me to the Fediverse and Mastodon. Then I discovered the ideas of the indie web and the small web, which led me down a rabbit hole of people doing things differently, sometimes directly opposing mainstream tech trends.
I knew there were minimal blogging platforms, but I didn't know they could be THIS minimal (I guess being even more minimal would prove too extreme for me). When I first logged in to Bear Blog, it frightened me. I was used to WordPress, its plugins, themes, and the almost endless possibilities (I am only chained by my own incapabilities). But Bear Blog's limitations proved what has long been known, backed by evidence and experience: limitations spawn creativity.
My first post here was a repost of an essay about Walter White, ripped from my now-defunct Medium profile. Too long, probably. Twenty-four hours of browsing later, my excitement spiked, and I wrote about exactly the feeling Bear Blog gave me: I felt it could free me from my personal burden of making every text sound like a journalistic article, following the form, being complete in meaning and structure. That burden comes with the territory. I am, and forever will be, a journalist.
Bear Blog allowed me to express thoughts in the form of sophisticated Facebook rants, without all the noise of comments, likes, and other dopamine-draining bullshit I never liked in the first place. Yes, I left the option for anyone to contact me on Mastodon or by email, but most people don't. At first, I thought it would bother me. Then I realized I kind of liked the silence.
Bear Blog smells of childhood. I started blogging in 2004, and back then, it was straight-in-your-face writing for a personal audience made up of friends, friends-to-be, and random lurkers who shared your geographic location. There was no algorithm pushing your words toward some South African or Turkish dude you have absolutely nothing in common with, except something the machine decided you share. Bear Blog evoked those old feelings immediately, from the bare-bones design alone. And yes, I know I'm contradicting myself here because the community is global, but the mere feeling of Bear Blog is that of a... global village, a community not too big to have its personality and quirks eroded in the process. I firmly believe we have Herman's design and BB philosophy to thank for that.
After a few months of mostly reading and sometimes writing, an idea sprang to mind. I figured I could use Bear Blog to start a concert diary of sorts, writing reports after every gig with my punk rock band POPIK. I thought it would be a peculiar form of expression, something birthed by and destined to die by my ego alone (who the fuck would want to read that?).
But as I started writing, I noticed and actually received more and more feedback from people who said the reports reminded them of old-school fanzine days. That I could really get the story going, make people feel like they're in the car with us when we travel, or backstage when we cause well-deserved unrest. I started writing these reports for the sole reason of actually remembering what we do on the road, because as the years go by, cherished memories are fading, and I’ve already lost so many of them.
There’s an old saying in Bosnian that I don’t know an English version of, so I’ll just completely translate it - every merch has its own buyer. I think you catch my drift. Younger audiences can learn about the band through mainstream social media and our raw aftermovies, which we post after shows. However, some people, usually older ladies, gentlemen, and everyone in between, found out about us via these writings and actually liked them.
Should I say text files are much easier to back up than video files?
So that's another thing Bear Blog helped me figure out.
ABOUT DISCOVER
Besides expressing yourself, blogs have always been about community and reading other people's works. On the Bear Blog, those two goals are served through the Discover section. There are three tabs over there, but the important ones are Recent and Trending.
Trending showed me that even outside the algorithmic machinations of social media, you get your superstars, your dramas, everything that bubbles up wherever human nature is present. Don’t get me wrong, I discovered a lot of cool bloggers through Trending, but sometimes it feels like a fight for attention through titles and opinions. There's an overall sense that extremism gets favored because everyone, more or less, defaults to tribalism. There were too many times when some average, incoherent set of thoughts rose to trending status simply because someone was really adamant about how they despise AI and would deal swiftly with anyone daring to use new technology. It's not only the AI story; Bear Blog, intentionally or not, gathers a very specific type of crowd, tech and non-tech.
That's why the Recent tab is where the real stuff hides. Good writing that doesn't get promoted because it didn't push anyone's tribal buttons. I always enjoyed chronological display. Yes, it does have a lot of problems, but it leaves curation solely to time and the person who does the reading.
Without the need to promote these posts to the people I write for in Bosnian, I was free to write in English, experiment in English, get better at it, and do all of it without expectations.
One year and 19 posts later, I'm happy to be here. A slave only to the words. Which is, after all, what blogging should be about. And I'm thankful Bear Blog lets us worship and kneel before them.
P.S. And send me an e-mail sometimes, especially if you write about cool stuff. I am always into cool stuff.
Thank you for reading. You can reach me via e-mail or My Mastodon profile.
Alternatively, subscribe via RSS feed.
Or, or... You can share your address with me if I decide to start a newsletter one day, and you'd like to receive it occasionally in your inbox. I won't spam or share your email with anyone, I promise!
Sharing this would be cool, too. Once again, thank you.