Dot com

May is the month when I get reminded to renew my domain name registration. Web addresses are temporary. One rents them, until such time that the subscription expires and, if another party is interested, this web-based real estate can be owned by another entity. 

For me, the ritual of renewal signals the passing of yet another year. The domain name, bottledbrain.com, has been registered under my name since 2010. Previously, this blog could only be accessed through the address, http://bottledbrain.blogspot.com. (If you type the address in the web browser, you will be redirected to the dot com page -- which is essentially the same website.) It was Manong Ralph's gift to me. I was unemployed, penniless, still in med school. I asked Ate Kate, sister of my friend Wegs, for ideas on how to set up the domain name, and she gave me a referral to a Cebu-based company called Dreamcode Domains, to which I'm still subscribed.  A minor glitch happened in 2018: my domain name registration had expired, I couldn't contact Dreamcode Domains, and was forced to register a dot org address. 

But those were glorious days of the internet. People wrote in their websites. They got to know each other and made connections through shared interests. They left comments and linked to other sites. The internet was a growing, vibrant community. Blogs, or personal websites, in other words, were an important component of that ecosystem. That community began to crumble when social media replaced these personal websites. Many blogs became silent, or were replaced by companies that profited off them. People posted and interacted in Facebook-gated communities. Blogs were essentially forgotten. I'm oversimplifying things, of course. We know the internet's history is more nuanced than what I had outlined, but I believe that's the gist of the story: the blogs were taken over by social media, people simply got disinterested in them. 

But I kept on blogging because I like having a space in the web, a little corner I can temporarily own. Hardly anyone visits here now, I suppose. I stopped checking the web traffic years ago. I actually like the silence. 

I still check blogs. I read them regularly. I enjoy them and learn so much from them. These blogs are quiet islands in an algorithmic sea of social media falsehoods, hate, and pride. They are quiet cafes playing jazz music and serving hot coffee personally prepared by the owner, not run-of-the-mill, machine-prepared, AI-generated Americano. I'm over-dramatizing, but I hope you get what I mean.

Here's to blogs! May they survive another year!