First off, let's get this out of the way by starting at the end: I don't think there's much value in personal blogs anymore, at least in how we currently think of them. Or, maybe more accurately, how we remember them, because they aren't so much a thing now. Unless you want to stretch your definition--and arguably you could--to things like Substack, Ghost, Medium, etc.
But I'm planning to use WhiteWind as a personal blogging space for a while anyway, because as I'll explain below, it almost completely removes the friction of the usual effort it takes to set up and manage a blog site as long as you're already using Bluesky, and also removes the friction of later leaving it, moving it, or deleting it.
Why Sometimes Even Minimum Effort Feels Like Friction
I'm a bit old-school, which is not necessarily a complement to myself. I think of blogs in the more traditional sense: self-hosted, or if using a webservice, something that's not primarily focused on monetization and/or professionally trained writers like the above sites. Something focused on longer-form writing, be it good, bad, professional, unprofessional, general interest or hyper-niche, and available to anyone as a writer and everyone as a reader. Not something paywalled. Not microblogging, though don't take this as a criticism of microblogging, I definitely enjoy the hot takes and shitposts as much as anyone.
If it sounds like I'm rhapsodizing about the Web 1.0 days of Livejournal and Geocities and Angelfire, well, I sort of am. It's broadly a little more selfish though: as a middle-aged person who used to blog frequently to a comparatively small but comparatively engaged audience an uncomfortably long time ago, I just honestly feel like trying to pick it back up again. I put it down many years ago for various reasons, and I want to restart for various reasons, none of which warrant a dry retelling except to say that I used to write a lot and I enjoyed it. I'd like to think I was half-decent at it (NB: this meandering introductory entry won't convince you of that) and I'd like to re-flex some of those muscles again.
I said "selfish", let me clarify why I said that: Of course I could just get an account on a free or paid site like Neocities or BTW or Write.as account, or buy a domain and host my own website, etc. But in a time like now, where the appetite for long-form, personal thoughts and anecdotes from someone you've never heard of kind of doesn't exist anymore, even minimal effort can feel like too much bother when the audience is probably just going to be you most of the time.
I admit I would like the open possibility of someone running across something I posted and maybe saying "hell yeah brother", but I don't want to spend time promoting unprofessional, marginal writing or trying to build a personal brand--maybe it's just a toxic Gen-X trait to want attention but not actively seek it out. Desiring a party to manifest just because you opened a bag of chips and left your apartment door open.
But that means, for better or worse, any real effort for output beyond writing (e.g., site maintenance, comment moderation, promotion) feels like friction these days in a way it didn't used to, I guess. But also, for better or worse, just writing into the void where no one can find it also just feels like wasted time and energy on a personal level. So if, like me, your Web 1.0 heart yet yearns for the Web 1.0 posting mines, what do?
That Ain't Workin', That's the Way You Do It
All that said, Bluesky is literally the only social media presence I have (I've had accounts on Twitter, Facebook, etc. as well as several personal sites and deleted all of them long ago) and I'm generally interested in the promise-as-yet-to-be-determined of ATProtocol, so recently discovering that WhiteWind existed was a bit of kismet with the desire to see if the creative non-fiction writing was something I could still do and enjoy it if I did.
WhiteWind posts are composed in Markdown and simply written to your ATPro PDS. In simple terms, that means WhiteWind:
- Uses your existing Bluesky account--you don't sign up for it, you definitely don't pay for it, you just log in with the Bsky account you already have and post, and you can share it and get comments directly on your Bsky feed, so whatever moderation lists you already have will apply to your blog posts as well
- Is easy to use--if you don't know Markdown you can learn everything used to make this post in under 5 minutes, as long as you know where the Shift and Control keys are on your keyboard, or use one of many WYSIWYG editor apps available
- Gives you your stuff--want to switch your content to another service besides WhiteWind? Host it yourself? Put it on a CD-ROM and launch it into space? You can do it without losing a single post. Requires some more technical know-how but if you really want to move or self-host your PDS (as in, you already know what that means) then it's nothing you can't manage
I had a Livejournal account (I know) for many years when I was younger, and when Livejournal got sold to a company everyone knew was going to enshittify it (and they did), I closed my LJ account and lost about 8 years of writing immediately. Hey, I'm not saying it was historically or artistically important writing. But it was the only place I chronicled many important events of my life during those years, in a public forum that forced me to consider how those events were related, and connected me via engagement to a lot of interesting and lovely people, many of whom I am still close friends with in real life today. Having it all deleted honestly did feel like a material loss to me, if not to posterity or anyone else.
This is easier and significantly less painful to do something about if I decide I don't like it or if the Bluesky headquarters gets hit by a meteor. And doesn't require you to understand a single thing about "decentralization" or "federation". Basically, it's frictionless to use and frictionless to abandon.
Maybe the lack of any required effort on your part except writing is a mark against it? I dunno. The point is that it won't hurt at all to try it and see if I enjoy posting again.
So, uh,
That's it really. I'm making a good-faith effort to try out this platform because it connects to the only social media I have, doesn't require me to do anything but post, I can take my content ball and go home whenever I want, and I miss writing for an audience, even a tiny one.
Anyway, that's my story, god bless.
