- 30 Dec, 2025 *
disclaimer: part of this post contains an off the cuff conversation about gen AI, and its effects on bear’s discovery page.
It’s been slightly less than a year since I started reading blogs including the ones on bear as part of my reduced internet consumption habits. I wanted a more casual reading diet away from my usual academic article spree, that makes me read more for the times I’m just tired want to relax but still have some fun, without reaching for another youtube video. This thankfully became into several other habits of me just making tiny doodles and even writing blog posts about the things I’m into. I was encouraged by the various people to just start writing and have a place for yourself. I’m sure this is a similar experience to many of you who joined …
- 30 Dec, 2025 *
disclaimer: part of this post contains an off the cuff conversation about gen AI, and its effects on bear’s discovery page.
It’s been slightly less than a year since I started reading blogs including the ones on bear as part of my reduced internet consumption habits. I wanted a more casual reading diet away from my usual academic article spree, that makes me read more for the times I’m just tired want to relax but still have some fun, without reaching for another youtube video. This thankfully became into several other habits of me just making tiny doodles and even writing blog posts about the things I’m into. I was encouraged by the various people to just start writing and have a place for yourself. I’m sure this is a similar experience to many of you who joined bear.
Everything felt great, but as the year went on, I found myself backing away from the discovery page. I thought I started reading fewer blog posts as I got busier with other hobbies, but going through my history, it seems I’ve been reading a lot more posts than ever. Just fewer new ones, I’ve been sticking with the people I’ve already been reading from my rss feed and less so from powRSS and bear’s discovery. I’ve found more blogs from people participating in the bear blog carnival than the recents and trending page. I’d love to find more people in more ways other than the discovery pages, but I couldn’t put my finger on why I wanted to move away from it in the first place. It was a great place to be, to find out what the people of bear were interested in, reading both the flashy trending things, and the calmer recents page.
This brings me to my slow moving away from both these discovery sites. This happened with Hacker News several years ago too. I moved away from Hacker News from all the weird corporate tech glazing despite their unaccounted sins, distorted discussions of techno optimism that was happening and the weird directions academic AI was moving towards. This was not all what Hacker News was, but it was definitely a small but growing portion of it. I wish I had some examples of my distaste, but it’s been such a long time. I kept finding really thoughtful and interesting things, but despite the good stuff, that discomfort really puts a dent on the time when you just want to read something fun. This isn’t a new revelation, that you have to filter through some things to find the fun ones, but when your filtering makes you scroll more and flip through pages just to start reading, you slowly but eventually don’t want to go back, just find things you like by yourself.
I had no stake in moving away from Hacker News, but it’s hard to see similar symptoms of my distaste creep in the course of a year, slowly, on a platform and community I cherish and felt welcomed in our shared need of wanting a safe online personal space. This isn’t to say that both these sites are responsible for curating stuff that I like - I think that is ridiculous. I’m not looking for a solution nor asking anyone to moderate and curate away the posts that contribute to my personal distaste, this is simply a lament. A lament I think that needs to expressed. I am yet another person on bear who is tired of gen AI and techno optimist things being pushed into places in less well-motivated and sometimes harmful ways, both academically and culturally. It, to me, reads as out of touch and as snake oil. Even if the tech is really good, even if it contributes to my thinking in terms of methodology, workflow or simply new theory, these good stuff often goes the way of the boy who cried wolf. My scepticism is becoming more and more a rejection instead of appreciation of the nuances. I don’t find this healthy for myself, and I’m not sure that I appreciate bear blog as a reading platform as much as I’d like. I think that’s okay, but I also think it’s better said than having to move away from it silently.
If you have any other ways of discovering blogs that filters out mainstream AI stuff or have a postroll/blogroll, please do send them to me, I’d love to look at it.
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