My list of daily links has gotten pretty stale over the last couple of years. I’m outgrowing some of the standard destinations that used to get me through the day; some aggregators have dried up, been bought, or gone out of business. The original inspiration for this website were the other weblogs I saw written by live humans who found things interesting and wrote about them; most of those people have jumped to Twitter and let their weblogs go dark.

I used a site called moreofit to search for websites similar to those I still frequent, and I’d say that about 10% of the suggestions are still updated regularly. Many of the suggestions are ones I followed back in the day, and a fair number of them trailed off between 2010-2012 as their authors moved on to different things (went corporate, left web design, bought a farm, or just disappeared). I did find, in that 10%, a couple of old favorites and some new suggestions. But it isn’t the same, and that’s sad. The commoditization of the internet is pretty much complete, and the do-it-yourself ideology, the idealistic, electric feeling of having one’s own place to post pictures or write about feels or show off code is gone. There’s Twitter, Facebook, or an app for that.

I think it would be interesting to try and organize a meetup of people who still have weblogs and talk to them about why they still write on their own site, if they write as much on social media, how they view their weblog now vs. when they first started it, and if they ever see themselves giving it up.

(1. Because social media is depressing. 2. Instagram only. 3. I view it almost the same now as I did then; I will admit that it’s harder to post every day but it’s still something I look forward to. 4. Doubtful; it’s served as my mobile memory since 2001 and I can’t imagine giving up the habit now.)

I did find, through clicking, a new theme for WordPress which could be the base for a modernization of idiotking here, too.