Why a Blog?

"What's a blog?" That was the question asked by one of my youth group students the other day when I told them I was starting the year trying to post a new blog entry every day. 

Why blog? Blogging is definitely not as popular as it used to be, having been supplanted by social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, MySpace...!) But there's a permanency to blogging that can't be matched by these other platforms. At any time you can go back and see what a person has written in the past without having to wade through sponsored posts, political rants, inane memes, and so on.

Another factor that I have recently become more aware of recently is the extent of censorship taking place on many of the most popular social media platforms (I'm looking at you, Twitter and Facebook!) There are more and more cases where content and people are censored simply for stating something controversial or something that goes against current cultural norms. I'm not talking about wacko fringe elements here, either, or misinformation/disinformation, hate speech and the like. I'm talking about stating opinions or sometimes even facts. Of course, it's possible for blog posts to be censored, (this blog site is hosted by Google) but it is less likely to be censored either intentionally or inadvertently (by various "algorithms" or "fact-checkers") . Not that I expect anything I post to be too controversial, but that's a moving target in today's culture. It's honestly chilling when you can't have disagreements in the "public square" of social media. It's almost Orwellian at times.

Again, censorship is not the primary reason to blog instead of make social media posts. It's more to share and be helpful in a way that is more permanent, easily searchable, and reflects your thoughts and opinions.