12 Days of Deluscar – Day 9: Blogging still has a place to stay
One thing that really saddens me is that we are seeing a slow but eventual departure from blogging as a platform to express opinions. It’s unfortunate that I joined the blogging scene pretty late into the game, and was there just as soon as blogging activity was starting to drop from it’s peak.
Why the departure from blogging though? There’s a lot of factors — but mostly the advent of social media. People prefer social media like twitter, facebook, reddit, etc… as a medium to discuss and share opinions. And to be fair, it’s much easier, shorter and convenient. People sometimes enjoy small-quantity content rather than a wall of text, and the former is something these social media excel in.
More specifically, these social media are more focused on (very) brief thoughts and opinions. Some of them like twitter even has a character limit, and even if they don’t, their designs and interfaces are tailored towards “smaller” and “quicker” content. In the above tweets, I chained nearly 20 tweets to talk about Go! Princess Precure, so twitter is anything but ideal for longer thoughts. Blogging fulfills a niche, especially ones that require a bigger, and limitless platform to express your thoughts. And it’s through a blog where you can format your writings properly to appear more readable, aesthetically-pleasing and all-around engaging. Blogging just gives you that creative freedom that is sorely lacking on other platforms.
Though even if we are talking about larger content exclusively, blogging also has it’s fair share of competition there. There has been an increasing popularity in podcasts and opinion videos as well, with the ability to make their points through voice or visuals rather than text. They are definitely advantageous in some departments over blogging, especially the technical side of animation. A while ago, I just watched some videos talking about anime fights and animation and it even surprises me a bit how seamless the entire thing is. I assume if you are talking about things like animation, videos will always be superior over blogging. Podcasts, I would assume, would be excellent for colloquiums.
However, despite some advantages the other medium may have over blogging, textual information is still the most readily accessible form of information at any given time. In comparison, listening to a podcast or watching a video are options not always available to you. And while videos are good for discussing technical sides of anime which may require visuals to make your point, there are also times where text can beat visuals too depending on the kind of topics you are covering, mainly opinion pieces, commentaries or editorials.
Furthermore whether or not you’re blogging, podcasting or youtubing, you still need an important thing which ties all of them together — the ability to articulate your thoughts. Even when you have the thoughts inside your head, comprehending, organizing and articulating them in a coherent fashion is an art in and out of itself. I spent 3 years by myself just to make my writing smoother and even now, I still feel like I have room to improve. But nonetheless, even if your aim is to do podcasts or video production, it’s essential to start from blogging in my opinion — as it’s the perfect starting place to practice articulating your thoughts.
This post is not meant to discount non-blogging platforms, obviously. They all have their niche to fulfill, twitter for brief thoughts, podcasts for colloquiums, videos for visual/technical analyses — just like how blogging fulfills the niche of longer, textual thoughts.
Despite the fact that blogging as a platform has faced many competitions over the years, it still has a place to stay. I have fought for it’s place for 10 years. And although I have slowed down and even got too exhausted at times, I hope new bloggers from here on out will keep up the good fight.
deluscar 
I also regret that I started blogging when it already was slowly declining, but the figure hobby started around 2008 not much earlier.
Social Media is not as nice as blogging, I like scrolling through colorful pictures of figures, illustrations and cute thot’s, but it’s not really platform for discussion. People are more out to get clicks and likes and patreon money XD
Nowadays Twitter and the other platforms are very offending in their way of communication, not just since Corona.
A big number of users just blurt out they first thought without a second thought and intentionally or unintentional show others the middle finger. Of course I try to stay away from this.
This is a weird comparison, but when did Danny Choo started blogging again? He’s a huge collector and me frequently visiting his blog definitely played a part in me collecting figures, lol.
It’s kind of a shame how modern internet interaction has been largely reduced to clicks and likes, yeah. Even in wordpress, the best I’ve got lately are literally just likes. Actual comments like yours are few and far in between, lol.
Yeah, and twitter is still the better place imo in that regards, which is saying something because that’s a really low bar. I’m also lucky enough to not have a too toxic community in twitter. But even then, anime discussions in twitter is straight out nostalgic at this point. I mean, they’re still doing that, but these days, twitter is like 90% political yelling than talking about your favorite hobbies. You can try filter your timeline as much as possible but the former is still gonna come out, lol.