Because I know no one's looking
Earlier this week, someone kindly reached out to say they enjoyed a post. I responded, "It's so easy for me to get lost in the fear of being seen."2
And then I read Independent blogs lost in search, and it left me thinking about visibility.
When I first started this Bearblog, I set my robots.txt to block all bots. I didn't want to be found in search.
But it didn't work — my blog was still indexed. I saw google.com listed as a referrer and scream-faced.
I immediately researched why this was happening and promptly made the necessary updates. I stopped blocking the search bots, and I added this line to my advanced settings:
<meta name="robots" content="noindex">
When I was 18, I had an art blog. I kept it up for a year or so, when Google suddenly directed a ton of traffic to it. (I posted a pencil drawing of Björk.) I was so troubled by it, I deleted my blog soon after.
I can only keep this Bearblog up because I know no one's looking.1 I like knowing that this is the void. I wouldn't want it to be any different.
Or, no, that's not entirely true. I am not troubled by being listed on the Bearblog discovery feed, or getting toasts, or hearing from people who enjoyed a post, or another blog linking to mine.
I just don't like super large search engines with all that anonymous traffic. I'm comfortable in smaller communities that are more reciprocal — where people aren't just "consuming" but also creating. It feels like something we're doing together, rather than... something I'm doing, and others are just looking.3
Yes, I think that's the difference.
I like that Bearblog doesn't have a follow feature.