Blogging Like The Old Days

When I first started blogging in earnest 16 years ago, it was a different thing to now.

You had something to say. So, you stuck it in a post and hit ‘Publish’. And everyone else did the same thing.

None of us took it seriously. We all knew it was a way to express ourselves with minimum fuss. If you wanted maximum fuss, you’d write for The Times, or shout your opinions out the window and hope someone other than the neighbour’s cat was listening.

Back then, blogging was a lark. A glorious chorus of keyboard clatter — each of us singing our own peculiar little tunes. There were no rules except the ones you made up as you went along, and even those could be artfully ignored if they got in the way of a good rant or a photo of a potato that looked vaguely like Winston Churchill.

Every post was a voyage into the unknown, though the unknown was often just last Tuesday’s lunch. We blogged about things — serious things, silly things, terrifying things, and the inexplicable joy of discovering a biscuit at the bottom of the tin you thought was empty.

Grannies blogged about the right way to mend socks, students blogged about the wrong way to cook rice, And someone — always — blogged about their cats. Usually in verse. Bad verse.

The comments! Oh, the comments! You never knew what might flap out. Sometimes praise, sometimes an argument about the Oxford comma (and occasionally a virtual pie thrown in your face). They came flying in on pigeon wings — short, bewildered, and slightly sticky.

We counted followers in handfuls, like pebbles or undercooked peas. A successful blog post might be read by fifteen people and a dog. Some even left comments. If you were really lucky, someone would put you on their “blogroll”, which was a bit like being knighted by a distant cousin.

Nobody dreamt of “monetising content” or becoming a “thought leader”. We blogged because the internet was new and magic was in the air — though it often smelled like burnt toast and sounded like a dial-up modem serenading the moon. Everyone had their soapbox, and what a rickety, colourful collection they were.

And through it all, there was camaraderie — the sense that in the vast, wild west of the internet, we were all just scribbling on the same big wall and hoping for a smiley face.

Blogging the old days? Utter chaos. Delightful, irreverent, misspelled, and frequently updated chaos. I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

Now, I must go. I’ve had an idea for another post. But this notebook is full.