Hello! Since this is the first proper post here, I thought I’d make a quick introduction. I’m Neil, and I’m trying out the blog thing for the first time. If you’ve been reading the news the last few days, you’ve probably put together why I’ve decided to do this now. Like many writers, I’ve been a fairly active Twitter user. I joined the site seven years ago, in what feels like a previous century to me now. One could charitably look at my account and say that over the years, I’ve basically been at least three different people. Personalities change—and they change a hell of a lot more when you’re plugged in from a relatively young age. There’s no shortage of think pieces, hot takes, and philosophizing about the effect that being on the internet from your adolescence onwards has on your identity as a person and your outlook on the world. Ultimately, I don’t come down on a moral judgement about the whole thing. It’s been equal parts bad and good to me.This Washington Post article from just after I joined Twitter explains these changes--and their lack of moral category pretty well. I don’t believe that Twitter (or social media in general) has made us any less intelligent as a species or whatever, but social changes tend to elicit this kind of response in people. For now, though, let’s just accept the idea that I genuinely liked Twitter, even if it was, at times a bit of a hellscape. Now though, Twitter’s worst tendencies as a service have been put on a pedestal by the new management; it seems as though we’re witnessing the last days of a cultural institution that has really framed and defined the last decade of history. Of course, Twitter isn’t done yet, and for now at least, I plan to stay on until it is, but the writing’s on the wall.
And so it is that the blogosphere makes its triumphant return. I was a little too young to be blogging back when it was a thing so this is all a bit new to me. At least for now, though, this won’t be a blog in the traditional sense. Think of it as an anthology series with basically no unifying theme. Like my Twitter account, the things you’ll be reading here will vary based on what I feel like writing about. You may get commentary, opinion, fiction, whatever. The main difference is that I’ll have to think about what I’m typing a little bit more. So, here we are—in a new age. Welcome!