December 4, 2025
Zero clicks, maximum feels
Blogging in 2025: Screaming into the Void
Blogging’s Back: No clicks, no ads, all heart
TLDR: A blogger rebuilt a minimalist, tracker-free site and vowed to write even if no one’s watching. Commenters cheered the quiet—blog for yourself—while others demanded paywalls for AI that learns from posts; the debate shows a growing push for a smaller, saner web and control over who uses our words.
Old‑school blogging just staged a comeback — with a twist. The author stripped their site to bare-bones, ad‑free pages, ditched trackers and outside fonts, and even used AI (artificial intelligence) not to crank out a new site, but to simplify the old one. No analytics, no “growth” tricks; just writing in the open, even if AI tools now answer questions by summarizing other people’s posts behind the scenes.
Comments exploded with anti‑clout energy. One veteran flexed, “I don’t need or want search engine traffic,” celebrating that social media sucked away the “profit chasers.” Another embraced the quiet, admitting they’re fine with “throwing messages in bottles into a silent sea.” The crowd split: open‑web romantics versus AI pragmatists. A hot proposal ignited debate — paywall the bots: “you should be able to ping AIs but there should be a paywall before they can train on your content.” Meanwhile, someone waved a shiny link for the skimmers, boosting the photo blog mijnrealiteit with “for the folks who won’t read past the first paragraph.”
The meme of the day? The serenity of zero pageviews. Whether this is rebirth or quiet quitting for blogs, the commenters turned the “void” into a vibe — less chasing, more meaning, and a growing fight over who gets to use our words.
Key Points
- •The author describes the shift from decentralized blogs to centralized social media platforms and AI-driven information delivery.
- •They highlight that AI tools increasingly provide answers by summarizing content, reducing direct site visits.
- •They note high-quality content moving behind paywalls and newsletters, benefiting writers but shrinking the open web.
- •They used AI coding tools to simplify existing blog software rather than auto-generate a new site.
- •Technical changes included removing external JS and third-party dependencies, adopting minimal responsive HTML/CSS, and replacing WinterSmith with a simple inline page generator script.