Why Blogging?

Hello. Welcome. The truth of the matter is that no one really asked me why I want to have a blog. It's probably because I didn't bring it up with anyone at all. But well, I said to myself maybe it wouldn't be bad to talk about this matter in the first post. Why I think having a blog is not an outdated option but a more evolved one. Why I fundamentally prefer this space more. Finally, to explain what I am going to do here.

I think it was a month ago that I read an article on Hamed's blog about how the new generation of content creation doesn't really align with the nature of the web. It's a straightforward and readable article. You can read it here: Online Content Prisons. My point isn't going to be something very different either. Reading that note was the spark to start the blog, and now I want to examine this matter from a personal perspective.

Probably very few people would deny what a blessing the existence of Telegram, Instagram, and the like is for us. But when it comes to content creation, I think the story is different. Let me start with an example. You don't really need to be a serious Instagram audience to realize what direction the content creation space is heading. Videos that are sometimes supposed to talk about detailed and serious topics, in order to get more views, martyr everything they have to reduce the time to the absolute minimum, something around 15 seconds. It is exactly at this point that the disaster occurs.

Allocating only 15 seconds to a topic that requires at least a well-crafted half-hour video just to do it minimal justice is a bad joke. A joke that brings an illusion of knowledge in its wake. The creator probably thinks what a masterpiece they have created that got so many views, and the audience also thinks they learned a lot from this video, but well, if we reflect on ourselves, we know that both of these are nothing more than a joke. Has it ever happened to you after skipping a few posts in Explore, to ask: "Hey, that clip that was talking about headlight adjustment, why did it say car headlights should be adjusted like this?" You probably won't even remember that post to ask this question, or even if you do, you remember almost nothing about it.

This is the most fundamental problem I have with Instagram (or any platform with a similar content creation style). A platform that encourages everyone to go for low-quality content (I'm not talking about the meme, joke, modeling, and similar spaces at all). Content with a cheap exterior but hollow and low-quality on the inside. Why has this problem become fundamental to me? Because I clearly see the habituation to microblogging and highly summarized content in myself (and of course, those around me). When I want to read a blog post that is somewhat detailed, my eyes wander off after the second or third line. Following a text has noticeably become harder and harder for me, and I have witnessed this downward trend. You can add attention deficit to this to see how disastrous the final performance is. How impossible reading is. This issue doesn't just end with reading on the web. This problem has become even more severe for me when studying. I can almost never fully muster the concentration on the materials I want to study for an exam.

The next issue, which was fundamentally the subject of Hamed's talk, is content getting buried in closed platforms. Or in Hamed's words, "online content prisons". Suppose you have a popular Telegram channel. Let's assume the channel you have has original content. Or at least, has tried to gather the best discussions in one place in the form of a post or a series of posts in a cohesive and unique way. The output is a valuable piece. There are two problems here:

1- Telegram, Instagram, and Twitter audiences are fundamentally not used to detailed content. Except for a very few, I think no one really bothers to take the time to read your lengthy post. If the topic is very fascinating to them, they save it, and it rots forever in the graveyard of saved posts.

2- Despite the existence of Telegram, whenever we have a question, we still use Google or a similar search engine. Or even Large Language Models like ChatGPT and Google Gemini, which I think are very good search engines. So still, whenever the matter is serious, our reference is the web space. A place where we know (or think) discussions are more precise. A space that has matured over the years. So now we are dealing with a mass of content that, assuming it is high quality, no one ever goes to. Or rather, they don't have much chance to encounter it. Because accessing them outside that platform's space is not possible. How can Google index channel contents when it cannot access them? When Google doesn't index it, how can a user reach a channel that has explained their problem very completely and precisely by searching their question? Practically, this mound of content is destined to be abandoned there forever.

I think it has now become clear to you too, or it has been a reminder, of what the problem is with creating content and being an audience in this space. That's why I wanted to have a blog. A place where I can ensure the things I say here and there are at least not forgotten amidst a mass of other words. Even if the number of my readers is lower.

What I said at the beginning of the post about wanting to explain why I think it's better to blog wasn't just a personal welcome. Or an impulsive decision to have a blog. This whole thing for me comes from the concern I explained. A concern I have carried with me for a long time. Many times I write on my Instagram, or in the channel I've had since my 3rd bachelor semester, amidst technical posts that I now write from my own knowledge or have read somewhere and rewritten with my own literature, I have tried to do something about this concern. If I wrote a post on Instagram, I tried not to skimp on expressing it as the subject required. Not shortening something to please someone, and most importantly, not caring much about the question "will anyone even read this?!". All these things and the habit of reading blogs, which I perhaps turned to about a year ago, dragged me here. I don't know where this path will ultimately lead, but well, I'm glad I started this.

What I want to talk about here

I don't know. I'll probably put whatever I write in the Agora channel here first. Meaning topics related to computer science or anything that is fascinating to me. This "anything" could range from cooking to how Postgres writes data on disk. If I read a tweet that is very interesting to me or hear a podcast that I really love. Perhaps alongside these, I'll also write about things that are my personal concerns, which again could have a wide range. From contemplation of death to why I think the hiring process is inherently unfair.

You can see the Telegram channel I talked about from this link. And Instagram from this link. I mostly post photos there.