Why this matters

It’s Friday, the 25th of July. Another normal day in another normal week. However, in this tiny corner of the vast digital space we call the web, there’s something I want to spend time both celebrating and reflecting upon: the 100th interview of the People and Blogs series went live. In the grand scheme of things, this is absolutely nothing. I’m well aware of that. But doing something for 100 weeks in a row, collaborating with 100 different human beings in the process, is something worth celebrating.

I knew this milestone was coming, and I started thinking about ways to celebrate it months ago. Should I try to get a special guest? Maybe one of the big names in the blogging world? Or maybe I should design and code a new site and celebrate with a new home for the P&B series. The more I thought about it, the more I realised that the best way to celebrate this milestone was to let the series run its course, and by the time edition 90 was out, the decision was taken: guest 100 was gonna be whoever happened to send me back the 100th set of answers. I send invites in batches, so there were a dozen or so potential candidates, and Marisabel happened to be the lucky one.

As I wrote in the most recent post to the Ko-Fi supporters, we’re entering the 3 digits era of People and Blogs, and the next milestone is going to be the beginning of the 4 digits era, which will arrive in the year 2042. I’ll be 53 by then, and I’m not even sure if blogs will still be a thing by then.

The thing I wanted to spend some time reflecting on though, is not the significance of having done something every day for 100 weeks (something I honestly don’t care too much about) but why all this matters. Not the series nor the interviews. Why blogs matter and why the people behind them matter.

I vividly remember the day I had the idea for People and Blogs. I was taking a shower, and we all know that good ideas always materialise in the shower. I remember going upstairs to check if the domain name was free—which it was, to my surprise—and I registered it on August 8th. I wanted to make a series about people and their blogs, and I am a creative person, which is why I decided to call it People and Blogs (I’m available to do brand naming btw; hit me up if you need help). I thought it was a fun idea, something worth making, but I didn’t consider it something important or profound. I mean, in the broader context of life, this is just a weekly series of newsletters. I’m not curing cancer nor solving world hunger.

And yet, over time, my perspective on this has shifted. I still don’t think it’s as important as curing cancer—for obvious reasons, I’m not a fucking idiot—but I now think all this is important. Connecting people scattered across the world through this medium is important. Keeping alive this digital thread is important. And as the web evolves, it’s clear to me that this is becoming extremely important.

I was recently discussing the “The internet is kinda shit right now” topic. So many people feel that way. Hell, I went through that phase myself. But my perspective on this has shifted over the years. The internet is not kinda shit right now. Not even in the slightest. The internet was and still is a fucking awesome and magical place. It’s a place where you can browse thousands of blogs. It’s a place where you can press the button and get a useless website. It’s the place where you can admire rotating sandwiches or stare at a random park for a minute.

Many decry that “The web used to be awesome”. The web can still be awesome. But the web is a human artefact; it doesn’t exist on its own. It’s a product of our creativity and imagination. We create sites, we tend our digital gardens, we produce and share content, but what matters, the truly important part, is you. Because when you read a post that resonates with you, somewhere on one of the countless blogs that exist out there, you are implicitly connecting with another human being. And that connection has the potential to be transformative if you open yourself to the possibility of allowing it to exist and you act upon it.

Has the potential to transform into friendships, into love, into life-altering experiences. Has the potential to forever change the trajectory of your life. Because the web is nothing more than a reflection of the life that’s out there, outside the edges of the screen. If you live your life sitting in a corner, not doing anything, simply watching the world go by, chances are nothing interesting will happen to you. And that’s fine, but you can’t then cry and say that “life is kinda shit right now”.

If you think the web is boring, I both encourage and challenge you to approach it differently. Go click on every single one of the 100 blogs I featured on People and Blogs, go dial a number on the Internet Phone Book. Register a domain name and make yourself a blog. Write something profound for the Indieweb Carnival. Stop being a passive consumer and leave the big platforms behind. Share your dreams and hopes, share your struggles and inner demons. Do it publicly or anonymously. Do it often, or sporadically. But do something. Anything really. The reason why you feel the web is slowly dying is because we're collectively allowing this to happen.

And if you feel like you’re not someone who has anything worth sharing—I call bullshit on that—or don’t like the idea of having a site and participating actively to the web, at least go support the people whose content you’re enjoying. Send a coin their way, let them know you value their work. It matters more than you might think.

But more importantly, connect. Email the people whose content you appreciate, sign their guestbooks if they have one. Make the effort, say hi, let them know that what they made resonated with you. Because that’s the only thing we all have in common, the only thing we truly share: our humanity. We’re all here at this moment, all facing our ups and downs, all facing struggles, all smiling and crying and feeling everything in between.

I don’t know if I’ll manage to get to that 1000th edition of P&B, but what I do know is that I’ll try do my part to help people connect with each other. Because it matters. It matters to me, and I know it matters to many of you out there. Thank you for sticking around for 100 weeks. I appreciate you.