Maybe you get self-hosted things via github or whatnot, but that's about as non-consumerist as it'll get.
And the younger generation is not doing this beyond work-related pages, so eventually the internet-as-literature phase will end. In the past you could type into Google "new mothers discussion board" and immediately find organic, non-corporate socialization geared towards Americans. That ease of use is sort of erroneously gone, and probably not returning.
Might I ask...which blogs are you reading?
No they don't. I avoid Medium and Substack like the plague. I don't use those sites for discovery at all, and whenever I come across a link to a blog on either of them, I usually regret clicking it.
I end up on plenty of blogs found through various sources. A few I've been reading diligently or on-and-off for many years, others I read one-off articles here and there that I've found through sites like HN.
The blogosphere's death is highly exaggerated, regardless of what TFA says.
> Maybe you get self-hosted things via github or whatnot, but that's about as non-consumerist as it'll get
I don't see that as a bad thing.
> And the younger generation is not doing this beyond work-related pages, so eventually the internet-as-literature phase will end
I don't think it will. I think there will always be enough people writing interesting long-form articles to satisfy my curiosity. Mind you, I don't exclusively read blogs, but I haven't touched social media in 5 or 6 years and that hasn't caused me to run out of interesting things to read.
But longform internet posts are gone nowadays in America, largely - due to English. It's too widely spoken for things to be found easily. Think about finding information about heavy metal concerts in Finland: that's probably doable from Google purely based on the fact you're not imputing English.
Last point: https://www.statista.com/statistics/990899/livejournal-users...