Hey Guys! I’m back with the 4th post of this week…now while staying this consistent has been a wholly new experience for me and is still very challenging, it has paid off. The 3 back-to-back posts literally brought Bookgest back from the dead, here’s a graph of my viewers a week before I started this challenge:
With these stats, if I post daily for a whole year I could probably take on Elon Musk’s Twitter Army. But this is closely related to today’s topic. Now I normally post on this blog whenever I feel like it, or when I have a cool idea. Unfortunately, inspiration doesn’t strike consistently, meaning I don’t post anything until I’m sure I am happy with whatever I have created.
I know calling my blog posts ‘art’ is a bit of a stretch, but what I’m trying to discuss here is more about how content over the internet is consumed. Let’s look at YouTube for example. There are people who put so much time and effort into the videos they make, making sure it’s a cinematic masterpiece with an equally brilliant script and distinctive editing. Having been editing for a few years now, I know how tough it is to do new things with the same software millions of other people use every day to achieve the same result as you. Such videos, while doing alright for themselves in the long run are definitely not comparable to the views of a short-form, intensely edited video with dubstep in the first 30 seconds and colourful captions to engage the viewer’s attention.
I have been on the internet for almost 10 years now, and am still nowhere near an expert, but I have been an avid consumer and creator of content. Whether my creations are good or not is up to other people to judge, but coming back to my earlier point, I only publish or post them when I am happy with them. Unfortunately, most internet algorithms, be it YouTube’s or Google’s prioritize activity. Meaning, posting a no-effort copy-pasted article twice every week is given much more attention than Mona Lisa’s posted twice a year. All these platforms focus on the amount of content instead of the quality of content produced. This definitely makes sense because more content keeps people using that platform for more time.
I could sit here crying about how that’s unfair but it is how it is. I myself have seen how much Google promotes my content. The ‘Fiction VS Non-Fiction‘ post is my most popular one ever. But I’d say the dual-reading post was much better, majorly because it was an original idea that I experimented with and had a lot of fun writing about. But what I or you think my best work is, doesn’t matter to Google. Google will promote whichever one has a higher engagement, clickthrough, and other boring SEO terms.
Recently I was thinking about which direction I want Bookgest to head towards, if I was a good blogger I would ask for your opinion, but I’m not, so I don’t care (that was a joke, pls don’t sue me). But throughout the inception of this website, it was always supposed to have a niche audience. That doesn’t mean I’m going to actively try and stop more people from discovering the blog. I figured, why do I get to make this decision, why do I get to choose where I want this website to go?
Bookgest was mine back when I created it. It isn’t just mine anymore. I like to think that years from now when I stop writing or posting, there will be someone who will somehow find this website in a forgotten corner of the internet. He’ll read some of my posts (probably not all, because I couldn’t bother reading all of them, and I am a narcissist) and he’ll think to himself, “Huh…..this is alright”. That’s it. I don’t want praise, I don’t want dislike, all I want is for someone to enjoy even one post and chuckle at one of my terrible jokes, not even chuckle, just breathe out heavily.
That won’t be my legacy, that will be Bookgest’s legacy. I don’t get to choose which direction Bookgest goes in, only time will tell. I’ll put my all into whatever I post, and as always I’ll try to post consistently and probably fail…but whether this website blows up or stays at the same amount of readers, there will always be an angsty teenager typing away at his keyboard, having a one-sided conversation on the internet, with Spotify working overtime in the background. Maybe I won’t post for a year or two, but I’ll eventually come back, not for you guys, but because the reason I started this website will always stand. I will always need to have a place to express myself, to put things out there, and put myself out there.
With that said, see you next time, whenever that is, because I’ll be here…
Wow… loved this one!
Thanks!