Can Substack Bring Back the Golden Age of Blogging?
I miss those days
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In January 2008, at 28, I launched my blog, Nothing is New. A new year felt like the right time to start something of my own. For two years, I’d been working as a book designer—secure, desk-bound, with assignments fixed and predictable. I wanted a creative outlet I could shape myself. Blogs were just starting to surge in popularity, so I threw myself into the blogging world.
A quote I found later summarized my vision for Nothing is New perfectly:
Nothing is new, but personal interpretation can often be so. – Alexander Girard
My first look into blog world was Door Sixteen by Anna Dorfman and reading Gawker by the hour. Then, I discovered Google Reader (RIP!!!)—my ultimate tool for curating favorite reads and looks. The end of Google Reader, to me, felt like the end of that era of blogs.
Mostly, my posts were simple sweeps of images around a single theme, pulled from whatever archive I was obsessed with that day. I tagged content by topic and era: 1700s to 1990s, Ancient, Artists, Color, Children, Cults, Fashions, Foods, Home, LGBT, Nature, NYC, Russia, Textiles, Wares, Women (and more). I’d add a few lines and hit “publish.” It was low effort, high satisfaction.
The Power of Archives
The archives are everything. Long live digital image archives—accessible to anyone looking for inspiration. I recently saw a TikTok encouraging young people to explore archives, to walk in without pretense or authority. I keep finding my visions in the books, magazines, and archives of the past, and I need to go back. This weekend, I’m heading to NYC, planning to spend hours in the Picture Collection at the NYPL.
Reflections
Nothing is New was a space without limits. I shared whatever I fancied—from WWI military patches to young Whitney Houston catalog shoots. I loved the freedom, the playfulness, and the lack of expectation. What started as a cure for desk-job boredom shifted the course of my life.
Through my blog, I found my people. Some are friends I’m still close with over a decade later. What was it about those days? iPhones had just hit the scene, and social media hadn’t yet invaded every corner of our minds.
As blog readers, we curated, scrolled, commented, liked. Sometimes, we emailed the people we admired—or didn’t.
Can Substack bring us back to those days of blogging? I don’t see many image-centered newsletters here, and maybe that’s a gap waiting to be filled. Maybe it’s time for me to dig back into the archives. I keep finding all my inspiration at the intersection of life archives and the internet.
Google reader goes down as my most missed piece of software that nothing has replaced since. 😢