Why I Blog: The Cure for Cancel Culture

To use an expression that is sooo 2004, blogging is sooo 2008. It seems to have been an Internet fad of a bygone era. Terms like, “reblogging” have been replaced with terms like “sharing” or “retweeting.” While many of us had several go-to blogs that we checked on a regular basis 15 years ago, today few of us have a single blog that we check even on a monthly basis.

That raises the question of why I write these posts.

I married my wife in 2002, while taking some college classes. After an economics class, I chatted to my professor about my wedding. I mentioned that rather than getting photos printed, I would ask the photographer to give me a CD-ROM of the pictures. The CD-ROM would last forever. Print photos would fade. My economics professor told me that I should indeed get them printed, that CD-ROMs would not last forever, and he told me a story about his dissertation, which was printed on punch cards. He still has the punch cards. But had he trusted in the technology, rather than a print copy, he would have had no access to his dissertation today.

I do not know what happened to that CD-ROM from our wedding. My wife and I still have our print photos. One lesson from this is to never argue with an economist. But this experience also taught me to not discount those technologies that we think are dated.

Cancel culture is real. When personalities like Milo Yiannopoulos or Gavin McGinnis were canceled, it was easy enough to pass it off as a movement that would only affect those on the extreme right. However, as time moves forward, the people who are “extreme” are those who are close and closer to the center. We even experienced a sitting president be “canceled.”

As a lack of diversity creates echo chambers on the big social media platforms, the intellectually curious will return to what made the Internet a vibrant community for new ideas. Like the Phoenix rising from the ashes, blogs will reemerge.

If you are interested in sharing your ideas in a manner not tied to the sinking ships of social media giants, consider blogging. Grist 4 The Mill is currently seeking interesting bloggers to add to the discussion on this forum. Feel free to submit a post for review, and you could reenter the world of blogging.