I was recently asked the question “Why a blog? Why now?” Here’s my answer for why a blog now.

I became interested in Second Amendment advocacy back in the early 2000s, right about when blogging was gaining steam. It was the preferred platform of Second Amendment advocates, and my RSS feed had dozens of blogs putting out tons of content each day. Every day I’d peruse Say Uncle, A Keyboard and a .45, Kim DuToit, The War on Guns, and dozens of others. Sadly, there are very few of those left today. We also used online forums, which I suspect grew out of Usenet and Compuserve forums. Those were heady days.

One of the first arguments I got into during those days was with Kim DuToit’s late wife over the question of whether hunters should be seen with AR-style rifles. An editorial in Field and Stream (as I recall) called out hunters using those rifles as scaring the public and bringing a negative view on hunting. I was a Fudd back then, and I took the wrong side. I changed my mind as a result of that debate and converted to an absolutist on the Second Amendment.

Some History

Let’s go through a bit of a history lesson. The early history of blogging dates back to the mid-1990s, when the first blogs began to appear online. The term “weblog” was coined in 1997 by Jorn Barger, who used it to describe his online journal called Robot Wisdom. In 1999, a programmer named Peter Merholz shortened the term “weblog” to “blog,” which became the commonly used term. Around the same time, free blogging platforms such as Blogger and LiveJournal were launched, making it easier for people to create their own blogs.

At first, blogging was mostly a hobby for individuals who wanted to share their thoughts and experiences online. However, it quickly evolved into a powerful tool for citizen journalism and political activism. Bloggers began to report on news stories and events from their own unique perspectives, challenging traditional media outlets.

Second Amendment advocates jumped on this citizen journalism approach. Any bit of news from around the country was instantly available at our fingertips, as well as a means of commenting. We had lively discussions. I don’t think that it’s a coincidence that gun rights saw a lot of expansion during this time. Remember, permitless carry was pretty rare back when this started.

Oddly, political blogs seemed to be a phenomenon of the right. The left didn’t seem to embrace it. I suspect that they preferred to get their news from mainstream media since it corresponded to their worldview. The attraction of citizen journalism for the right was that we could break out of the control of the legacy media and find out about things that were important to us. That’s not to say that there weren’t lefty blogs — the Huffington Post was basically left-wing alternative journalism — but it was the right that created the greats such as Instapundit. I remember when I was the recipient of my only Instalanche. That blog that was getting maybe 1,000 hits per day got 50,000 in an hour.

And Then Something Horrible Happened

Social media came along. Its siren song of the promise of huge distribution was seductive, and the blogosphere fell for it. At first, bloggers embraced platforms like Facebook and Twitter as a source of traffic. They’d post links to their articles to bring in traffic.

The problem was the traffic wasn’t sticky. People would follow the link to read the article, but then they’d go back to the social media platform to engage in arguments. Instead of bringing their friends to the blog, they’d engage on social media. Bloggers would get a quick hit, but they weren’t building a community on their own platform, they were giving all that content away for free.

It didn’t take long before the content started to move completely to social media. If you wanted your idea out there, it was better to just publish it on social media than try to get people to click on your link. You could engage with huge groups of like-minded people that you didn’t know. It was far easier to build a following.

This Was a Really Bad Thing

We had given control to people that were perfectly willing to use that control. Big Tech is owned lock stock and barrel by the left. It didn’t take long before they started to censor us. Sure, you could write the same content, but their algorithms would hide it.

During my daily browse of my RSS feeds for up-to-date news and articles, I was able to engage with authors whose work I was interested in. I saw every headline. There was nothing between me and them. I had the opportunity to choose whether or not to click and read more. Social media broke that relationship. Now there was an algorithm heavily biased against spreading content that I wanted to read.

It took a long time for the community to realize what was going on. Unfortunately, the reaction has been with the wrong solution. The right has been trying to create its own version of social media that “won’t censor.” Instead of YouTube, we’re told to use Rumble.

This Wasn’t The Problem

The problem wasn’t that the main platforms were biased. The problem was that we went from a completely decentralized model to a monolithic centralized model. We put all our eggs in one basket, and they tossed our basket into the ditch. As long as we’re gathering on someone else’s platform, there’s always going to be a means and a motive to control the discussion.

One of the lures of social media was that it was free. Ha, TANSTAAFL. Likewise with some of the “free” blogging platforms. Renting your own server back then was expensive, and you needed some serious IT help just to keep things running.

That is no longer the case. You can rent a Vultr server starting at $2.50/month, and it will come preinstalled with WordPress, if you desire. (Yes, that’s an affiliate link. We should be proud of those.) If someday Vultr decides your content is not for their platform (highly unlikely), just take your backup and install it on one of the hundreds of other server vendors. Or just plug an old Linux box into your internet connection and run on your own server. If Facebook decides to ban you, you lose everything.

Decentralization is the key. Don’t let anyone control the discussion, no matter how benign they may seem now. They’re not doing it for free, they’ve got to make money somehow.

Blogging is Better

Blogging is superior to social media for our purposes for a number of reasons:

• Depth of content: Blogging allows for longer, more detailed content that can thoroughly explore a topic. Social media encourages shorter, bite-sized content which often lacks depth and nuance. Twitter wars are just tag line debates. Nobody gets convinced without the entire argument, and you just can’t do that on Twitter.

• Ownership of content: Social media controls the content which can lead to issues with censorship, privacy, and algorithmic biases. I think we’ve seen enough of that to have learned our lesson.

• Community building: Blogs can build loyal communities centered around shared interests and values. Social media platforms are more fragmented and focused on short-attention content sharing. Social media thrives on clickbait and outrage. That’s not how to convert people to our side.

• Writing skills: Blogging can encourage people to hone and develop good writing skills while in social media, people tend to communicate through abbreviated texting, emojis and messaging slang which may weaken their writing language skills over the long term.

• Dependency on social media algorithms: With the widespread use of social media, content creators are more dependent on platform algorithms to promote their work. This can lead to a homogenization of content and a reduction in the diversity of perspectives.
  
• You decide on your level of security. If the government orders you to turn over the IP address of such and such a commenter, you can truthfully say “I don’t log ip addresses.” It’s up to you what you track.

What Can You Do?

If you’re a content provider, stop giving it to the social media giants that hate you. Publish your content on a platform that is completely under your control. Sure, put your links on social media, but don’t get sucked into their world. We should be actively trying to move people out of those walled gardens.

Support other content providers of a like mind. Don’t be afraid to give them links and engage blog to blog. A rising tide lifts all boats.

I’d be very wary of using the various platforms that allow you to monetize. Substack, Locals, Medium are fine now, but they’re just a different flavor of how we’ve suffered. They can shut down your content on a whim as well. While they may be on good behavior for now, there’s no way to tell what the future holds. That $2.50/month Vultr server is less expensive than a $50/year Medium subscription.

If you’re a content consumer, follow the links you come across but engage on the content’s platform. Don’t go back to social media for engagement. If you’re responding to a link a friend provided on social media, tell them that your response is over on the blog in the comments. Actively try to move the discussion away from Big Tech controlled platforms out to the content providers.

Cultivate an RSS feed. There are a ton of free RSS readers. Or just set up your bookmarks of blogs you’re going to visit each day. Don’t rely upon social media for your content. Everything you see on social media is designed to make you give the social media platform more attention. Doom scrolling gives them money. It’s also terribly unhealthy.

Spend your money in a way that supports your content providers. Those ads you see on blogs are how they recover their costs. Most bloggers aren’t doing it for the money, so the income they get off of ads helps. If you need to buy ammo, click on the ad so your favorite blogger gets the commission. You’re going to buy it anyway, so why not help out?