I’ll keep going, just as I always do and always have done, until the day finally arrives when I no longer have to. – “Fifteenth Anniversary”
Sixteen years is a long time by internet reckoning; some of y’all reading this may not have yet learned to read when I started it in 2010, and even I barely remember some of the topics I covered in the first few years because they have since faded from the public consciousness. I daresay very few people were reading this blog on phones in 2010; now I suspect most read it that way. That is, most of those who still read it at all; before the enshittification of Google I averaged some 3000 visits per day, and now 500 is a good day. Of course, that’s not only due to Google; as I wrote three years ago, “the world and the culture have changed quite a bit since I started this project, and in a world of YouTube and TikTok, blogs are beginning to look as quaint as radio shows did in 1959.” But being considered “quaint” doesn’t actually bother me; after all, 25 years ago I was driving around in this car (though the dress and boots were already about ten years old then; if you’ve ever wondered how long I’ve been doing the snakeskin prints, now you know). This blog is on WordPress rather than Substack or whatever has replaced it in popularity, and my email address is on Earthlink. My books are still intended to be read on paper; the Kindle versions are an afterthought I only create to please those readers who prefer electronic texts. And in philistine circles, even writing essays oneself rather than attaching one’s name to something shat out by a computer program is considered hopelessly passé. You know what I think of all that? My 40-years-younger self would’ve rolled her eyes and dismissively said, “Whatever”. Because I plan to keep doing things the way I prefer doing them until I either croak or the increasing walled-gardening of the internet makes it impossible.
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