"There was something about the internet of old. The leisurely, dial-up conjuring of a digital page via Netscape was certainly revolutionary, but to a seven-year-old me it was more; at once novel and expansively thrilling, it literally put the world at my young fingertips. Later, even when the paradigm shifted to high-speed, there was still a certain idealistic nascency to the web."
"But the elder net meant something more to the skier. Long before Google's AI search unceremoniously summarized complete articles into more "digestible" morsels, before smartphone social media imbued our lives with scrolling instead of engaging, the fledgling internet offered the skier a plethora of information from disparate voices who would have had a platform in no other way. It was a veritable feast of words, content, and form,"
"In any form, the personal blog has seemed to reach a nadir. As social media has devoured internet eyeballs, and as a now monetized web has made sleekness and SEO the dominant motivators for online creators, the confessional, personal nature of the blog has succumbed to the wandering, short focus of modernity. Writer Farah Mohammed artfully noted the decline of blogs on the scholarly JSTOR Daily back in 2017, saying"
The early internet created a sense of wonder and direct access, from dial-up Netscape to ad-free, rough YouTube. That era offered skiers a wide range of independent voices and detailed, personal accounts that mainstream platforms would not host. Personal ski blogs aggregated trip reports, gear insights, and community knowledge in a panoramic, grassroots manner. The rise of social media, monetization, SEO, and algorithmic search summaries eroded long-form personal blogs. Smartphone-driven scrolling and platform optimization favored short, clickable content over confessional, nuanced narrative. The decline of blogs reduced the availability of diverse perspectives and first-person ski storytelling for newer generations.
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