In the early 21st century, a coworker was often reading Fluffy Bunny. which was a personal variety-type of site, with a diary and lists and essays and whatever else interested the guy. It was so different than what we see nowadays; people seem to be performative, competitive, boastful, and guarded online. The content has to achieve something publicly, has to have a goal for greater reach and elevation.
When I see all the stuff online and get nostalgic for the early days of the Internet, I think about Fluffy Bunny. I read it, though not as often as my coworker. It was one of many personal sites that were easy to discover. At first, there wasn't a label for people's confessionals and expressive writing. Then "weblog [web+log]," became "blog," and we had a label for what Fluffy Bunny and other early adopters were doing. I don't know if Substack and Medium would be considered blogs, but they don't have the same vibe as what existed before the algorithms took over.
Before social media proliferated, I read various blogs for fun and communication. At one point when I was feeling isolated in a toxic job, I started reading more LiveJournal entries, which were really personal. That's the type of writing I'm trying to replicate in my own fake blog because you pretty much never see such sharing anymore. I remember working in a quiet office and reading a blog by a bored receptionist to see how our experiences compared (I don't remember the exact title, but I can't find it). There were so many corners to discover online and fresh content to follow. It was more organic back then; Google describes it as "a shift from a creator-led web to an extraction-led web, where the value generated by individual human labor is being harvested by massive systems and the people who optimize them."
Eventually Fluffy Bunny decided to call it a wrap. At the end of 2004, he said he'd had the site for more than seven years, i.e., he started in the late 20th century and finished in the early 21st. "I started this before the deluge of blogs, livejournals and the like. Now it's time to step back and let the next wave of folks crank out their material while I move on to other projects and other places."
p.s. the e-book version of my debut novel is still at Amazon, and the price for the print version has been reduced: buy at the Eckhartz Press site.
2 comments:
Fluffy Bunny? What a hoot. Why not link back to it so we can all enjoy it? Or are you keeping it a secret to avoid tarnishing it with current day trends and trolls?
I did link to it. Click the first mention of the name. I found it via Archive.org
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