The Second Golden Age of Blogging (otherlife)
Blogging was then diffused into social media, but now social media is so tribal and algo-regulated that anybody with a real message today needs their own property. At the same time, professional institutions are increasingly suffocated by older, rent-seeking incumbents and politically-correct upstarts using moralism as a career strategy. In such a context, blogging — if it is intelligent, courageous, and consistent — is currently one of the most reliable methods for intellectually sophisticated individuals to accrue social and cultural capital outside of institutions. (Youtube for the videographic, Instagram for the photographic, podcasting for the loquacious, but writing and therefore blogging for the most intellectually sophisticated.
If the First Golden Age of Blogging saw the blog as a public amplifier of creative, intellectual talent ensconced in professional careers, today we are living through a Second Golden Age of Blogging, where the blog is now a vehicle for starting and exiting careers.