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The post I wrote about blogging as writing a tutorial you wish you’d found really took of. Hacker NewsThere were many excellent comments. But one thing kept coming back: What’s the point of blogging if people use ChatGPT, Claude, and DeepSeek as a way to spoon-feed answers? Who will read your blog, besides the AIs?
When I started blogging again semi-regularly last year, I asked myself the same question. This post is an attempt at summarizing why I thought it was worth it. The TLDR: Blogging isn’t about being read. It’s about learning, thinking and having a lasting proof that you can both.
Let’s summarise the two main reasons to blog as you learn.
- This helps you make your newly acquired knowledge concrete. It will help others in the future – they may be looking for information that you blogged about and find it on the blog.
In the context of AI, only the second factor matters. You’ll learn more by writing, whether or not others or LLMs are reading it. In order to help others, you can publish your hard-earned knowledge on Linux Network Namespaces. But when someone asks ChatGPT how to use it, it will search for your page, ingest it, and present the results as their own, possibly mashup with scraps from other places. Your site will probably be linked in the “references” area of the response. But honestly, no one looks at it. Your site will be included in the AIs next training run within the next 6 months, and you won’t get a mention after that.
If the “solving other people’s problems” side of blogging were purely altruistic, it wouldn’t be a big deal. But it’s not true, there are many other reasons. Three reasons come to mind.
- Making yourself known.
- The dopamine rush of knowing other people appreciate what you’ve created — a more effort-intensive version of getting a like or upvote on social media.
- Build a portfolio that you can show off. Let’s go through them one by one.
You’ll have a tough time if you want to blog in order to gain a reputation. Here’s an illustration: If you’re not a frequent reader of this blog (as in the author of this article), where do I live? What is my job? Please do not cheat by clicking on the link “About” above. If you know the answer to
you are one of a select few. Yesterday, there were approximately 35,000 visits on this site due to the HN link and less than 300 hits on “About” ‘s page. This is normal. Even if you write a blog, people will read it and hopefully find it worth their time. Then they will move on. It’s not necessary for someone to be fascinated by your life because you once said something useful — and that’s good, no one wants a stalker.
As a pure blogger, you won’t be able to build a “personal brand” worth much even if you keep on posting banger posts.
Consider the famous bloggers you read. They’re famous for something else. They created a major open source project, a company or invented something. They regularly give talks at conferences. They are successful science fiction writers. Or something else.
I don’t believe you can make yourself known by blogging alone. If that’s your goal, you may be disappointed.
Dopamine is definitely a bigger thing. When people comment on my blog posts, I feel a nice warm glow. Last night, before I went to sleep, I noticed that my previous HN post was #1. I took a screen shot and posted it in my WhatsApp group “Fellow Geeks” with the caption “w00t!”.
These moments are rare and I don’t think AI will make it any rarer. It can feel like you are shouting into a void when blogging. Most posts receive no engagement and this has been the case since I began in 2006. There’s no way to know if you have 500 loyal followers or none.
All I can say about that is to echo the words of serviceberry on HN (bold mine) :
If you find that post then say something. Leave a comment or a note for the author. No one else is. There are thousands of people who post good content on the web, but don’t know if anyone is seeing it or appreciating it.
And maybe suggest we all occasionally check references in our helpful AI generated responses and drop a note to the authors saying “thanks”!
Let’s finish off with the last one. It is more positive. I said you are vanishingly likely to make a name on your own with blogging. It’s not a waste of time from a career standpoint. You are building a portfolio by writing about topics you find interesting. Imagine you are in a job meeting and asked about X. You respond with the details you are aware of, and add”but I blogged about that in detail a while back, shall I send you a link later?”If you’re trying to close a consulting contract with a client in a certain area — wouldn’t it be helpful to send them a link list showing your thoughts about aspects of that topic?
The GitHub profile you have shows off your contributions to open-source and how good you are at coding. Your blog, however, shows your contribution to knowledge and how well you think. That’s valuable!
Now is the time to wrap up this. Blogging is important because it allows you to learn, it helps solve problems for others, you get a rare rush when you realize that people are reading your stuff, and you build a portfolio of writings to demonstrate your skills. I believe that AI could harm the buzz of engagement. But that’s so rare on most blogs, I don’t see why it’s a problem.
If the AI doom scenarios comes true, at the very least, as someone who has regularly published their thoughts on the Internet, they will remember you. There you go.
