Moving to Bear
For this Christmas, I bought myself the gift of a one year Bear Blog subscription. As a former software engineer, I am capable of creating my own blogging website, and have already done so. Why, then, would I choose to host my blog on Bear? Here are my reasons:
Focus on the writing
I’ve spent much more time fiddling with my code than actually writing words. My website has more than just a blog, but I’ve decided to press pause on the other features now and just focus on writing.
Taking a break from AI
I’ve written in the past about weaning myself off AI so I can write without those training wheels. I’ve still used AI to look for mistakes and clean up my writing. Besides that, all of my coding is AI assisted. For now, I’d like to go for a time with no AI at all. That means putting my computer away where I can’t get to it. Without access to my development environment, Bear provides the simple interface I need to get posts from my phone onto the web.
Discovery
Having quit social media, there aren’t many ways for people to find my blog. On the free service tier, Bear provides hosting without discovery or custom domains. I want to keep my domain and have my posts appear on the Bear Discovery feed. The trending feed is sort of a quasi-social media algorithm as upvotes determine ranking, but the toxic elements of social media are abscent.
Giving back to the IndieWeb
As I compiled my blogroll, I was struck by just how many of my favorite feeds are hosted by Bear (and that surprisingly few are on Substack). This made it clear how important Bear is to the IndieWeb. I’m happy to give something back for all the benefit I’ve received as a reader.