So here I am, launching a personal blog again. Not that I felt any necessity per se to do so, there is no shortage of social media or other platforms from which to choose to create content for. However, now more than ever, the purpose of a personal blog is becoming more and more evident.
Community Guidelines violations have almost become like points to me at this point. Rack them up, and hope that the “prize” won doesn’t last that long. From double standards of enforcement to A.I. blunders, social media networks’ model of policing has proven itself to be annoying at best, problematic and bigoted at worst. I was shadowbanned for weeks on TikTok for calling out an antisemite back in late 2021, I’ve had A.I. flag jokes of mine on Facebook to the tune of a 30-day ban. In the case of TikTok, the cause was even more insidious, said antisemite’s followers likely mass reported me — for offending the feelings of one of the most offensive people on social media.
Social media algorithms themselves restrict the flow of content: too many Facebook posts in a day renders one “spam” in the eyes of the site, placing one’s posts further down in the feed — Instagram acts similarly, as does TikTok. Instagram’s elusive Explore Page placement makes every post a shot in the dark: since hashtags have apparently long since ceased to be the main vehicle for discovery on the site, “getting to the top of” a hashtag lost meaning long ago. And while TikTok’s For You Page makes discovery much more easily facilitated, it decides which of one’s videos are put out and to whom — too many videos means that the majority of those videos are the equivalent of shouting into an abyss.
So I’ve decided to get back into blogging. Partying like it’s 2006.
Some of the content I share here is going to be things I can’t share other places, and of course, the occasional rambling. But this blog, as opposed to TribeHerald or my intro/booking site yitz.io, isn’t centered around monetization or any other type of “conversion”. Of course I want to inspire people through speaking and create content, but this site is for my personal expression.
Feel free to subscribe, feel free to follow. Lots of travel, lots of news opinions, lots of stuff to follow. Baruchim ha’ba’im. Welcome.
