Stupid Ramble about Blogging

It occurs to me that I never write blog posts anymore. In fact, the only thing really motivating me to sit down and write this one is that I have a new Vim plugin that provides a nifty interface for controlling a Wordpress blog. Blogging just doesn't have the appeal that it once did. Ten years ago, everyone blogged. About the only thing we had in the online social network realm was MySpace and it definately was not actually useful for keeping in touch with anyone. So we all fired up Livejournal and wrote blogs. Livejournal obliged with friends lists, and extracted their daily bread by charging you for trivial things like the ability to host pictures.

Now, there is Wordpress, which is vastly better than LiveJournal. And I don't know how they pay their bills, because they offer everything for free that any casual blogger would care about.

Actually, I do know how they pay their bills. There aren't as many casual bloggers. Anyone that was casual about blogging is perfectly content to achieve the same thing on Google Plus or Zyngabook Facebook, that is, keep in touch with people. Blogging actually required, to some degree, having something to say. I wish I could sit here and glare down in smug superiority, but this is the first blog post in years that exceeded the length of a Facebook post. I was about to say "of substance." But I had to reread sentence two, paragraph one.

Maybe I'm just getting older. I crossed the 30-year line not so long ago, and one thing about that is that I definately, definately have less to say, and wish I hadn't said 90% of the things I said in my twenties. I won't even read my old LiveJournal blog anymore because everything I ever said that was worth saying on it makes me cringe. Did I really say that? Did I really think it? Did I really think it was witty? Am I happy that, for the rest of my life, anyone that knows my Internet alias and cares can know what my twenty-year-old self thought on just about any topic? Can know what my twenty-year-old self thought about sex? Kind of deals a blow to middle-class respectability.

I've read about Japanese salarymen that they live in strict hierarchical structures at work, and at home, and everywhere else. But happy hour is mandatory, and everyone drinks, and what you say and do while drunk is never to be spoken of again. Even if you tell the same boss, who you would not even imply disagreeing with at work, to go fuck himself (自分性交行く, isn't Google wonderful?) while at the company mandated bar hop, it is understood that what happens in the bar, stays in the bar.

I don't know if that's true. I've read it, but like lots of things I read, I have a hard time believing it. But maybe we'll need something like that in regards to the Internet. "What you did on the Internet at 22 is off limits." I have a hard time believing that. On the contrary, it doesn't seem to be going that way at all.

I could go delete my LiveJournal, of course. Or become someone other than TrentonZero. But that feels like cheating. (Insert snarky "I am TrentonZero!" here.) It's cheating to pretend that I didn't used to write stupid atheist rants, and later stupid Christian rants, and still later not-quite-so-stupid, but still stupid, Catholic rants. (The entire Catholic Magesterium exists pretty much for the purpose of practicing damage control on just how stupid a Catholic can be on the subject of Christianity or morals, and still speak in good faith.) To pretend that I didn't go through the whole unpleasant experience of having a number of my co-workers discover exactly how low they rank in my esteem and confront me about it, and, as a side-effect, realize that I'm a pretty cowardly and treacherous person when it comes right down it. That me-minus-ten-years wasn't the sort of person he was. And that I am not the sort of person I am now. And that the two are linked and intertwined and I get dizzy if I try to think too hard about what's different and what's the same.

Anyhow, obviously VimRepress works. You can get it on Github at vim-scripts/VimRepress.