Blogger is Dead After All

Alex Ariza - Fashion Institute of Technology Student Days Circa 2008 or 2009

What the hell happened to this site? How did Google let this happen? 

Back in 2005, twenty years ago now (good Lord), all my FIT colleagues were on Blogger. It was fun. It was cool. People shared what they were working on in school or their personal projects.

Blogger was a place where you could truly express yourself freely. You could cultivate a small following. The ability to explore other blogs was also part of the fun. You saw the blogs your friends were following, or simply jumped from link to link until stumbling upon a great niche blog. 

My professors at FIT encouraged us all to start a blog. I remember starting this blog in 2007. The professors had a blog. The students had a blog. Other students outside of FIT had a blog. The professionals had a blog. Everyone in my world at the time had a Blogspot through their Google account.  

Alex Ariza - Scanning Artwork for School. Almost everything made for school was also posted on Blogger. Circa 2008 - 2009.

Some of my professors even followed my posts, which, looking back, was risky for me. Not all of my posts were safe for work or used appropriate language. 

Around 2012-2013, everyone left this platform to either start a tumblr or WordPress site, including me.

Google ruined this site by letting it stagnate and refusing to update or match the features these other platforms had. Why even buy a site if you're just going to let it rot?

That's how the tech business works, though. Buy out your competitor and exploit it, or close it down.

I'm surprised this site is still up. 

Do you remember the absolute failure that was Google Plus? What an absolute joke.

Visiting this site is like a digital time capsule. Everyone's posts end around 2012 on this site. It's like a singular catastrophic event wiped out this once thriving civilization. 

Ghost mall.

Ghost town.

Empty chairs and empty tables.

All that remains is a goodbye post stating they've moved to Tumblr or WordPress. 

Now, even Tumblr is a ghost town. What happened there?

Wordpress? Do people still use that site?

This place is like Detroit. Gary, Indiana. Some remote, deserted areas of the US that once had a rich history and a large population.

Everyone is gone. What the hell happened?

Twitter. Tik Tok. Facebook. YouTube. Medium. Behance. Whatever the hell else is out there. That's what replaced this?

None of those sites will give you the freedom that Blogger gave you. You can post just about anything here. Google indexed these sites. Google doesn't index anything from Facebook, Tik Tok, etc.

People don't want freedom. They want certainty and convenience. They just want to be where everyone else is. This is a perfect case study of this phenomenon.

This is a lost cause. I'm the old man screaming at the clouds now.