You see these kinds of search terms popping up, right? Things like, you know, “j lo topless” and all that clickbaity stuff. It makes you wonder what the internet is even for sometimes. Well, I had my own little dive into the wild world of online content, and let me tell you, it was an experience.
So, a while back, I got this idea. I thought, I’m gonna start a little project. A blog, actually. My plan was to write about classic Hollywood, you know? The real glamour, the stories behind the old movies, the craft. I spent ages researching, finding cool photos, writing up what I thought were pretty decent articles. My practice was all about creating something with a bit of substance.
I launched the site. Put up my first few posts. And then I started trying to figure out how to get people to actually read it. That’s where my real “practice” began, the hard part. I’d share links, try to use relevant tags, engage in what I thought were related communities. I was trying to build a small, dedicated audience. Sounds reasonable, doesn’t it?
Well, here’s the kicker. Every time I’d look at my analytics, or see what was trending, it was always the sensational stuff. It felt like I was trying to host a quiet poetry reading next to a monster truck rally. My carefully crafted articles on, say, Bette Davis’s early career? Crickets. But if there was even a whiff of some celebrity scandal, or some outrageous search term like that “j lo topless” thing doing the rounds, suddenly my little corner of the internet would get all sorts of weird, misdirected traffic. Or worse, just get completely buried.
It was like trying to have a normal conversation while someone’s screaming nonsense in your ear. The whole online space just felt flooded. My “practice” in creating quality content felt like throwing pebbles into a hurricane. What I quickly learned was that the algorithms, the way people search, it all favors the loud, the shocking, the… well, the stuff I wasn’t doing.
I’d see these waves of interest around completely unrelated, often junky, topics. And it would just suck all the air out of the room for anything more low-key. My little blog about classic cinema? It eventually just withered. I tried for a good year, kept tweaking, kept writing. But it was a constant upstream battle against a tide of pure noise.
So, when I see those kinds of headlines or search terms now, I just nod to myself. I had my practice run trying to make a little space for something different online. And boy, did I learn how the internet really works. It’s less about what you create, and more about what screams the loudest. That was my big takeaway from that whole endeavor. A bit of a downer, I know, but that’s how my “practice” went.
