Thoughts about what blogging/journaling site to use

I remembered catbox existed, so here's an image. I really love this show.

Anyways.

I've had this Livejournal account for about 4-5 years, though I feel as though the site itself is quite wack. Of course, there's the controversy with the site being bought by a Russian company (censorship in Russia, etc...) though that's not really the main reason I would like to stop using it— I mean, censorship is bad, yes; it's just that I was already thinking about leaving even before I found out about it. For one, the IOS app disappeared out of nowhere which greatly annoyed me since I really liked making journal entries on my iPad. Then, everyone there is either Russian or a bot— I mean, the atmosphere of using a seemingly dead site it quite intriguing, but it gets to a point. There's also my senses telling me they'll start adding even more updates that'll push out even me, the guy who came in after everyone else already left; stuff like, I don't know, AI generated automated summaries so you can have your journal entry written for you? Just weird stuff like that.

So, I've started archiving the few entries I do have in my Livejournal account. Ultimately, I did decide on alternating between public blogs and private diary entries here in SpaceHey (which is also why I'm writing this blog here). Though, I did do some light research on other platforms in case they might appeal to me more. Of course, none of them really did, though I suppose it wouldn't hurt to talk about them for a little bit? This isn't advertising (and even if it was, starting with "ok so i didnt rly like em at all ://" is a horrible way to start an advert).

I found out about this one app called Day One from Reddit threads talking about exporting Livejournal entries in bulk, so I decided to check it out. It seemed neat, and it was! But, it just seemed like more like the type of journal app meant for people who journal everyday. It also felt too clean, sterile? Imagine those upper-class aesthetic Instagram/Tiktok videos where everything they do mundane things but as a fashion statement. "Follow me in a day in the life of a(n) X" types, y'know? That's what Day One felt like to me. Plus, I don't have 36$ every year to drop; a free plan is essentially an over-glorified .txt file writer.

Next one was actually this Livejournal fork (basically, a modified duplicate) called Dreamwidth. I actually really liked what I saw, and it was pretty close! It had a similar aesthetic to SpaceHey, in that they both try to emulate an internet from the past. There was also a feature to customize my journal style. In essence, it seemed to be Livejournal when it was still good. However, that the first thing I saw upon hitting "random journal" was someone roleplaying as Kokichi Oma from Danganronpa told my rather superstitious side to hold off for a while until I'm fully prepared to tackle that site. If you're interested, you could check that website yourself.

 

There's other sites like Tumblr or Blogger that I didn't even consider, because I'm specifically looking for sites that have a rustic feel to them like this site.

I chose to continue with SpaceHey because, well, I already have an account on SpaceHey. If I grow to dislike the site, then RIP my entries here, because I don't have a clue as to whether or not they have the option to mass export entries. Other than turning this into a general blog/journal, I could just stick with my initial plan of using my SpaceHey account to write down my creative processes and go back to writing private journal entries by hand or in .txt/.odt files. It's better to have multiple options to fall back on rather than focusing solely on one thing, after all. But since this is currently my de facto Livejournal replacement, I'll start ending my entries exactly like how I did in my Livejournal account. It's like this:

♥