September 20, 2026 at 14:47

the death of the personal blog

nobody writes personal blogs anymore.

the friction associated with setting up a personal blog is far lower than it would have been in 2006 - commercial offerings, free platforms, or AI to build it for us. but it feels greater than ever because frictionless alternatives now exist; setting up a twitter takes seconds and the twitter algorithm is a free, built-in way to get your first readers.

in 2006 you paid with effort to set up a blog. in 2026 you pay in aesthetic.

to me, this is gradient descent towards a local minimum, and i think we are stuck here. the world we have built is convenient, not aesthetic. LEDs are more convenient than neon signs, but the loss of Hong Kong’s neon should upset the world. personal blogs are the neon signs of Hong Kong.

the feeling of stumbling across an old personal blog is incredible. reading articles written in 2006 on a website abandoned since 2014, pages of content with the small “0 comments” tag. seeing an abandoned twitter with no replies is just the norm. the effort of setting up a blog is what makes its abandonment sad.

so here we are. it’s not the same to start a personal blog in 2026; the writers of 2006 did not know what the internet would become. but i hope by enduring the friction ($12/year for a domain and the effort of maintaining a jekyll site on github pages) somebody might stumble across this in many years and get the same feeling i get. consider it me putting up my own neon sign, even if it’s more work than a cheap LED.