I’ve been thinking about it and I really think we should bring back blogs. Damn, try saying “bring back blogs” three times fast, I couldn’t even do it once.
Now, I understand this is quite the old-fashioned demand. What’s next, I’ll suggest we bring back Jessica Simpson heels and skinny jeans? I get that making such a statement may require some work on my end. I suppose, just like the saying, “to have a village, you must also be a villager”, it might mean that if I want blogs, I must also be a blogger…And if that’s what it takes, let me just say, I’m up for the challenge. I can give it the ol’ college try. I’ve never had a problem keeping my words or opinions to myself (just ask my mom), but I can’t promise that I’ll be consistent. Gotta keep everyone on their toes, ya know?
I do miss blogs. I miss oversharing via the written word rather than through an audio medium. I miss the real-time updates that felt like you were being invited to read along as someone filled out their diary entry. I miss the human emotion and personality behind the words I’m reading. I don’t know about you, but the ChatGPT fatigue I am currently experiencing on every single social platform is real. The cadence, the sentence structure, the Oxford commas and every paragraph ending with “and, honestly?”…I’m extremely over it.
Now, this doesn’t mean I’m some big AI denier who can’t come to terms with the fact that the world is moving forward and technology is, too. It just means I’m craving points of view that are entirely human. It wouldn’t hurt to consume some original thoughts or a typo every now and then!! Hell, how about an apostrophe being put in the wrong spot when people sign their last name on a Christmas card! That jacked up apostrophe tells me there’s a real human in there. And honestly? I love that 😉
Back in 2010, I had just gotten my first “real” job at a regional newspaper. I won’t name names, because I may say some things that could seem rude. Anyway, I was so excited to finally land a job and get started on my career of ~*GrApHiC DeSiGnEr*~ that nothing, not even the Google search of the extremely old building I would be working in, could create any doubt that this was a fantastic move for me. This newspaper had been in circulation for around 162 years by then and had the coverage area of a large part of southeast Iowa. I was so excited to get in there and flex my particular set of skills that would no doubt create real, positive change for all who encountered it. I could just picture the loyal readers opening up their paper, being temporarily blinded by a burst of light and creativity, before they let out a gasp of pure awe and admiration. The light, of course, came from my SICK designs.
Well, dear reader, imagine my surprise when it did not go down like that at all. The people were great. I think one of them was maybe later accused of aiding and abetting in a murder, but even he seemed really nice. And now that I think about it, one of the fellow designers also had the dark energy you’d expect from a broken mirror sitting under a ladder. I gave him a ride home once at his request and am actually grateful to be alive to tell the tale. But everyone else? So nice. Absolute gems. The job, though? Depressing. The workspace? Dark and dingy. The work itself? Soul-sucking. The drive to work? Dangerous. One December morning on the drive, I encountered black ice, flipped my Jeep and still showed up and clocked in for my shift. What can I say, I’m a millennial, and we have to be missing a limb to miss a day of work. When I arrived (a little late, mind you), I was understandably disheveled. The part of the morning I hadn’t spent upside down in a ditch, I spent in the back of a police car being scolded by a deputy for being irresponsible and wrecking my car while I still lived with my parents. So, I’ll admit it was a little rough. Anyway, that particular day was the day that all new hires (HELLO!) were going to get their photos taken for the next day’s paper. Surely they’d bump it back a day so their “star” graphic designer could get her shit together, attempt a real smile and maybe even fix her streaked mascara, right? Wrong. The photoshoot, which included me shoved up against a beige wall feigning a smile more fake than the Louis Vuitton I was carrying at the time, went on as planned. That photo and all copies of it have since been destroyed in a mysterious fire. Weird, huh?
At this point, you may be asking yourself, “Why, Mackenzie, are you telling us all of this? We’ve all had bad jobs. Why do we have to hear about yours?”
Well, my friends, this all ties back to the title of this blog! I’m nothing if not an expert at tying things together.
When my job was sucking the life out of me, the one positive part of my day was the time I reserved for my “daily reading”. Before cranking out 50 dumb real estate ads that did not require a college degree or a single brain cell to create, I’d type in double you double you double you dot The Pioneer Woman dot com, a blog that my Aunt Megan had introduced me to. I’d read The Pioneer Woman, AKA Ree Drummond’s blog religiously. I loved learning more about her life in Oklahoma, her children, her husband and even about her dog, a basset hound named Charlie. She used her writing to describe what was going on in her life in an authentic way, and she used humor in her words to let me develop a healthy parasocial relationship with her that briefly took my attention away from the fact that I spent hours digging the hair and skin cells out of the keyboard I was given on my first day that obviously belonged to the poor sap who had the position before me.
And now that we’ve all lost our appetites, the added perk of reading this blog every day was The Pioneer Woman’s recipes, which I’d sometimes shoot over to the office printer when nobody was looking, so I could try to outdo my Aunt at the next family holiday. Her blog was truly a bright spot every day for the long (dramatic) 6 months I worked there.
The Pioneer Woman’s blog is just one of the many great works that have been lost to time, much like Homer’s Margites AND that newspaper I used to work for. Was that job rough? Yes. Did someone come in off the street one day and shit in the trashcan in the women’s bathroom? Also yes. But did it teach me to toughen up, put my head down and get the job done on a tight deadline? Hell yeah it did. That paper that so many people relied on to get their news every single day, now only goes out twice a week and exists mostly online. That doesn’t feel right.
Now, we have short form video to properly brainwash us into thinking our bodies aren’t thin enough, our homes aren’t good enough, our kids aren’t well behaved enough and that we simply aren’t doing enough. Whether it’s a well-intentioned video trying to teach us a lesson with a monotone narrator or a funny, albeit unoriginal take on a viral sound, these videos are effective in their number one goal, sucking up our time. And this is tough, because as a marketer, this is MY business. I should be the biggest cheerleader for this kind of content. But, I see what it’s doing to our attention spans and I feel what it’s doing to our sense of self-worth. They’re all plunging right along with the literacy of younger generations. That’ll never go away, and that’s fine. But, if I’m going to be positive, and honey, I AM! I think our attention spans are coming back. Our desire for reading a few hundred words about normal life or how a recipe was developed is coming back! Everything lives on a cycle and I have hope that our collective brains are ready for a little more substance. A little more checking dictionary.com to see what a word means like the good old days. Something beyond a 30 second video that took three ring lights and a ChatGPT script to make.
So I guess that’s it. Blogs are coming back. As a matter of fact, I’m writing one right now. I don’t think it’s good, and I’m probably not going to read through for errors, because that’s not the point. It’s real baby, and HONESTLY, that’s the whole point 😉
