Performative Blogging

Photo from Unsplash

Don’t worry, I am not going to expose anyone but myself here.

A few weeks ago I saw a YouTube video: The Performative Epidemic (Invidious) by chon digital, that was about something I think everyone has heard about in one way or another.

Basically, people that pretend to do or engage in a certain activity and post about it online. All with the hopes of getting engagement and make themselves known or internet famous, although sometimes they genuinely want to form connections with people but end up looking like attention-seekers anyway.

I will be honest. I do like to be known and to have some fame. I am not going to pretend otherwise, but I have also tried my best to write about whatever I am feeling like writing, and to do so without worrying much about what is trending or popular.

However, I’ve been very, very tempted lately, to go ahead and copy whatever is going on in the online circles around me.

Seriously though, I look at what’s on the top of the Bubbles frontpage every couple of days and often think “how did I not write about that sooner?” Even more so when there’s a trending post that caused a lot of public responses—such as Hey you, start communicating! by David, and many others before it!—that I could have contributed to—and I may do so even after they are not trendy anyway.

I just need to admit it. I am a little jealous, because a lot of the posts are kind of obvious. They are meta-posts about blogging, about being yourself, about the indie web, about socializing in the internet, a rant against AI, someone who switched to Linux, or whatever in between!

And you know? Writing this, I think it has been holding me back. A part of me wants to write about the next big thing that will get a lot of clicks, and that has stopped me on my tracks from writing about what my brain would usually come up with.

Look at my weeknotes that mention what I actually do and engage with, and you can see a lot of themes that would usually be expanded upon from a paragraph to a whole blog!

Maybe about my return to Monster Hunter Freedom Unite, a guide on how to get started through the early stages of the game or set up online multiplayer rooms for it via emulation! I’ve even been asked for this by a friend already!

It could be a tour through the Miis and experiences I’ve had on Tomodachi Life: Living The Dream, sharing some funny screenshots and recordings of the game that I’ve saved with hilarious moments, and some thoughts about it.

Or it could be that post about cycling through my city! I experienced a lot of things as I’ve gotten started on this hobby/transportation method, and I could even do a tour through some neat places I’ve seen on my rides, although I prefer to keep where I live private for the most part.

Perhaps a nostalgia trip through Max Steel, the toy franchise that heavily influenced my life through its movies—which I’ve been bingewatching for a few days—and their action figures I wanted as a kid

But like, who wants to read a young adult rambling about a toy from the early 2000s and its low budget movies with PS2 quality graphics? Why would one care about the early beginnings of yet another hobby of mine when there’s a dozen I’ve written about already? How trendy can a blogpost about an old PSP game with terrible controls and lots of grinding really get? Tomodachi Life is the one somewhat trendy topic, but whatever.

Funnily enough, some of those themes are things friends have already asked me about a couple times, I am just being deaf here for no reason—nobody cared about Max Steel though unfortunately.

Of course there are readers for everything, and I’ve been reassured by many of my online friends about how they like that I write about whatever all the time.

And yet here I am, writing my own meta-blogpost, with a title that is likely to make it to the top for once.

Is this the ultimate move of “performative” blogging? Am I being as hypocritical and desperate as it can get while writing about the fact that I should not write about trendy topics just to get attention for it?

Perhaps I am, but I will write about my little niches soon enough too. Now click that upvote button in the comments section for me okay? Or just send me an email, I love them very much too. 😁

To make it clear again, a lot of the people who have blogposts that get to the top are actually awesome. They, like me, have plenty of variety and themes and shenanigans they share online. I am definitely not saying they are being performative and it’s something that is hard to judge anyway. If anything, I’m the one being a little childish about it. But hey, that’s just my brain sometimes.

Now I just need to share this post at the perfect time to get the largest amount of readers as possible…

NO, STOP IT, END OF LINE.

This is day 67 of #100DaysToOffload