I happened upon this article extolling the value of personal blogging:
Ironically, I discovered it on Mastodon. It would, perhaps, have been more ironic if it came to my attention via Twitter. At any rate, I agree with the headline even though I find almost every paragraph in the article soaked in nostalgia for a past that never existed. Take for instance:
People built entire communities around their favorite blogs, and it was a good thing. You could find your people, build your tribe, and discuss the things your collective found important.
We are now in an age where people come on the internet to be the worst possible versions of themselves, and it’s an ugly sight to behold. Take the power back by building blogs and putting comment moderation in place (it’s relatively easy on both WordPress and Blogger).
As with all tools, personal blogs can be used for good or for ill. When people first said “never read the comments”, they weren’t talking about YouTube, but about blogs.[1]
At any rate, I’m not one prone to resolutions for the new year,[2] but I’m already jumping into writing more, not on my blog exactly, but here:
My parents have a Zoom call that’s theoretically about writing on Fridays, so I’m planning on putting my assignments here. And some of the nonsense I used to contribute to Twitter will get posted here first and then on Twitter via a bit of automation I should probably write about soon. 
Clearly this isn’t the earliest mention since the blog post’s premise is that we read the comments even though we know we shouldn’t. It’s entirely possible there is an even older reference I haven’t found. At any rate, blog comments are a great example of Sturgeon’s Law. ↩︎
I’m more of a Lent person. ↩︎