Why I started blogging 🗣️

So I started blogging. Blogging appears to be a forgotten craft. I think of blogging as the original social media. Sharing stuff when I want to. With the idea that it just won't evaporate and become forgotten. I started blogging around late summer of 2024. I felt like when I talked on the web much of what I said became lost or obscure. I attribute that to the evaporating nature of social media. I spill my thoughts out here on my life. When I find something that I want to share. Artists works tend to be difficult to find. I feel social media encourages artists to push out quantity. I think quantity and quality is good for art practice. But I decided to blog to share more insightful things. Or just my daily drawing life.

I try not to overshare and separate family and friends from my artists life. I wouldn't be anywhere without them, but I try not to overshare. This is just for personal space reasons. Even with many people I meet, I intentionally leave out names. I do this because not everyone wants to be mentioned by name and for their privacy. My thought is that I only mention people by name if they have a social presence. I also avoid naming anyone who I have had negative experiences with. I do not want to start a flame war because I have a bad opionion. Think for yourself. The internet tends to cause people to act in ways they may not in real life. I guess you can compare it to wearing a mask in public.

Some artists intentionally would rather not be known. Perhaps this has to due with their line of work. Or for fear out of persecution. Or perhaps controversy.

Often when I posted on places, I couldn't tell if anything I said was just lost in the void or what. Perhaps certain places shadow banned me. Perhaps I overshared. Besides for YouTube and newgrounds, most, but not all social media acts as what appears a show once basis. All that work for it to become lost in the ether. You may argue that YouTube does this, but as long as you curate a video list people can find your work. Although sometimes people couldn't find my older videos, so now I create playlists for all of my videos. I also add those videos to specific playlists as well.

Blogging is also a way to help build your websites search engine optimization. So I can't complain on that either. Although I want to make actual good content. I made this website using html, css, and javascript. I also have my own specific build process that let's me create templates and partials for the sake of reuse. What you see in the end is this website. I wanted to mention that my site is viewable without css and javascript. But I added features via those technologies for convenience. Think of things like typography, ease of use, scrolling feel.

I wanted to make reading content on my website an enjoyable experience. In the past, I used technologies from Node, Php, and many of the libraries that use it. I found those technologies difficult to maintain the further the years go on. I have experience working with operating systems like Ubuntu and Redhat, webservers like apache and nginx. I also have a good knowledge of setting up websites from domain names to configuration. I try to keep it simple. That is why I love Netlify as my host. Html pages to this day are tried and true. Even though I have a large experience using technology like react and the multitude of other technology like WordPress and single page applications, I choose simple .html pages. I could really work with just about everything. Doesn't mean I like to. I have experience with mySQL, SQL, MongoDb and elastic. Really too much technology. I know a good deal about command line as well. Git is a must. I don't know everytyhing and probably never will. I went through a phase of using Linux and use it where it makes sense.

My website isn't perfect, but I realized that if you wait to share what you want to when you are perfect, you won't be able to answer the hard questions along the way. That is why I share a lot of stuff on my website and YouTube channel. Many artists share when they are at a good level or way past professional master level. I really should have started blogging sooner. But better now than never.

I decided my blogposts will talk more about my journey and day to day life as I find worthwhile information. Perhaps I will make a video form for some things. I need to share my actual art more. Most of the time, I just do practice for the fun of it. Then often when I look at it after, I think to myself that this is bad. Then I throw it away. I really need to practice harder. I think my drawabox work serves as a good deal of my needing to improve work. I should share my stuff anyway. I will add images to my blog when I can. I also have to think about optimizing the images for fast webpage load speed without using a cdn.

Don't make your website more complex or your art life more complex than it has to be. I think artists need to build an audience these days. It appears to have worked a lot differently in the old days or the early days of the internet. I personally will share blogposts when I feel like it. But the truth is I often write when I don't feel like it.

I feel like my entire life I have felt good at doing things I didn't feel like doing. Pushing myself and setting deadlines has been good. If I have many deadlines, I will write them down. I let deadlines bother me to get stuff done. If you don't set deadlines, it will never get done.

Maybe I am contradicting myself as I said I only blog when I feel like it. Haha. Perhaps the algorithms taught me that I always need to be feeding them to survive myself. Not that I am reliant on the content economy. Something that has bothered me is how YouTube tends to lack creativity. Doesn't mean I am saying it completely lacks it. But often you will see creators all make the same video with a video title that appears slightly similar. I attribute that to the content quantity problem. I think this started in the early 2010's when YouTube started prioritizing watch time compared to views. It hurt animators I believe around 2013 on YouTube. Caused quite a stir. This is surreal because I recall watching a video about the change. Here we are ten years later and I have noticed that some creators are successful when they post when they can. I think often they use newgrounds as it is more creator friendly. But they have a YouTube channel to post their content on as well.

But then you get the reactor YouTube channels. They suck views and just put their face in the corner of the screen and react to videos. I would say that is a quantity problem. They don't contribute besides their fake reaction. This seems equivalent to a quality assurance problem. The original creators appear to loose out on that one. Perhaps they benefit somehow, but that is like the old days when an artists commissions work and the offer for them is that they will be paid in exposure.

Another reason why I started blogging was issues I had with YouTube. I am greatful for the platform, but many people have brought it to my attention that it is hard to find my videos. In addition to that my videos often do not get recommended. Perhaps I suffer from quality and I need more experience myself. I also heard some wild rumors about YouTube that make the platform more difficult for artists. I wanted YouTube to be more of a blog. But I think it turned more into a second boss. No matter what you do, you always have bosses, but it is hard to get feedback from that boss. I also wonder if the churn of quantity hurts as well. I love to share what I do on the platform but I had some issues.

Considering I have a day job, often I will come home and spend the night making YouTube videos. This often takes me away from making the art I want to focus on myself. I will have to try that and share it to YouTube. Also, I don't have a good way to share my traditional art on YouTube besides my phone camera. It could work, but suffers quality. I just need a more stable phone stand. I should do timelapses maybe.

The YouTube community sometimes feels empty. I get good feedback on occasion and people download my apps here and there, but I began to wonder if anyone is actually around. I may do the drawabox discord more now. Many platforms have seemingly dried up over night. Hard to say why. If I had a guess, people feel taken advantage of by platforms training their AI models on the work of others. This may have caused an abandonement of platforms.

I think the basis of magic internet points like karma and internet cred only go so far. Granted I myself am not a professional. I am not demanding pay in any form. I understand the ways of labor in our modern era. I think a way to own your social media while also being discoverable is the way to go. Although I think simple html websites are where it is at. Perhaps that and things like discord or similar software like it. For a sense of community.

Art whether for the sake or for profit are important as always. But never demanding people buy what you make. It is a game for some to do what they truly love to do. I myself have had difficult programming because of my day job as well as people asking me for assistance with websites and IT related stuff. Art is my salvation from the technology filled world that tries to capture every moment in digital form. For better or for worse. Maybe I am just tech fatiqued...

Hope to have more blogposts as I create. Look forward to it! I encourage artists to do the same thing. You never know when the platform you are using will go belly up or changes something in their closed box algorithm that makes you hard to be found. Or worse case you loose everyone who followed you because of a false ban. Often horror stories in tech become reality. Companies purchase other companies and either make the platform worse to squeeze a profit. Some will intentionally make platforms bad to justify getting rid of it. Other times, they will sunset it entirely. Meaning they close it down with a short notice. Poof gone. Could you imagine if you relied on YouTube ad revenue or some other platform for clients and a living. I recommend you try to build an emailing list as well. You just never know in these days. Also, the reason why I recommend a simple html website is because of being able to take it with you. Many web platforms are difficult to move once placed in. I myself coded my website to be easily moveable to anywhere else. I could even self host on a raspberry pi if I wanted to. Make sure you own your domain and have an understanding as well. Blogging is a good way to build credibility, seo, and domain authority. So I highly recommend it. I am a bit of an SEO expert myself, so you may probably think I am dumb for the fact that I haven't started doing this years ago. All I could say is the second best time to plant a tree is now.

Don't beat yourself up if you loose your audience. I have lost my audience before if that makes you feel better? Think when OfferUp acquired LetGo and I lost all of my good ratings. I had so many good ratings. I have suffered from losses from a variety of reasons. But now that you know, you know. You can't do everything, but do what you can. Stay tuned for more blogposts 👨‍💻

About Lars Barnabee 🐝 hey that's me