Does it have something to do with the rise of smartphones and no one typing on real keyboards? (Maybe why blogs died.)
Is it a consequence of voting, which blogs didn’t have?
What happens to your thoughts? Do you turn them all in the form of a question? Do you tear them down into a Mastodon one-liner and hope a popular person notices it?
If Lemmy had more of ourselves in this way, maybe it would be a healthier place.
Being idle until the media put out an article on something for us to talk about gives them too much power over us.
There’s an actual_discussion community, which isn’t exactly lively. There’s a casualconversation community, and even that’s all in the form of a question.
Start a blog is a little like “If you don’t like the huge corporation, you have to start your own huge corporation to crush them”. Make a blog, never be seen again.
As for people giving their thoughts, it seems held back until you free it with a link or a question.
I feel like blogs are small and relatively stand alone, and nothing like large corporations or Lemmy. Visibility is a question, but that just raises more questions. How many viewers do you want each month? What if you only have a few but they really care what you say? How many views do you get here? Do people hear even care what you say? What if you started a blog but cross posted links to it here? Maybe that would take advantage of both worlds, or maybe it wouldn’t, and all of that depends on your goals and whether you have anything to communicate and whether you do a good job of communicating it.
What’s being held back, and what’s being freed? Certainly my thoughts aren’t being held back or freed.