Why I Chose a Personal Blog Over Social Media Platforms

Day 983 of living in Japan.

Why a blog?

Not Xiaohongshu, not Zhihu, not WeChat Official Accounts, not YouTube, not Medium.

But a personal blog.

In this era, do people still read blogs?

Perhaps not just readers—

This is probably the question I've asked myself most often.

Because a purely personal blog has no traffic whatsoever.

Investing time (building the blog, decorating it, writing, distributing), money (server costs)—what do I get in return?

Indeed, in an age of fast-food culture where short videos occupy more and more of people's time, in an era where platforms compete for traffic and user attention, completely abandoning platforms and choosing to build my own little wooden raft and throw it into the ocean—who knows where it will drift.

Sometimes, people don't care so much about outcomes.

The process itself is the greatest satisfaction.

Building—whether physical handcrafts or network code—has similar beauty. Building itself has meaning.

Thank goodness for AI.

With the help and guidance of teachers like Gemini and Claude, I went from knowing nothing to server selection, Ghost installation, debugging, domain binding, applying for Stripe, bilingual blog SEO, image loading speed optimization, and more—implementing everything bit by bit.

If writing on Xiaohongshu before was like renting a single room in a fancy high-rise—where you had to follow all sorts of reasonable and unreasonable property management rules or face forced eviction—look at recent cases like Hu Chenxing and Zhang Xuefeng as typical examples. When the property management doesn't like you, they can find any excuse to prevent you from renting anywhere.

Building my own personal blog, as long as I remember to renew the server and domain, is like owning my own 30-square-meter bare apartment. Moreover, no registration or review is needed—it can be seen anywhere in the world with internet access. Gradually painting walls, designing, adding furniture. The process itself is interesting. Though the room is modest, I don't worry about being evicted.

In my own house, I can lie down, recline, or stand—whatever I want.

No longer do I need to consider that politics can't be written as "politics"—it must be abbreviated. All those damn abbreviations—go to hell! I'm sick of you!

Articles can be published instantly after writing, without worrying about overnight review or not knowing exactly what the problem is.

No more traffic anxiety. I have no expectations for personal blog traffic anyway, so naturally there's no anxiety. Even if it ultimately becomes my own diary, it's still a beautiful diary.

Finally, I've completely blocked out those mindless trolls on China's internet.

After I started writing on Xiaohongshu, while it attracted many like-minded people for communication, it also attracted attacks from various internet trolls.

As I've said, in my 2-3 years in Japan, I've received kindness from Chinese people, Japanese people, and people from various countries and regions. But the only malice has come from one place: our great motherland compatriots.

On Xiaohongshu, I couldn't choose who could comment and who couldn't. I didn't have time to refute, block, and delete one by one.

Here, the world is finally quiet.

After setting up paid subscriptions, only paid members can comment.

A mere $3 threshold keeps the trolls out. How worry-free!

When writing on Xiaohongshu, people would always comment under articles:

"You're already in Japan—why are you still posting on Chinese social platforms?"

I used to find it amusing. Now, thinking about it, they were showing me the way.

The world is so big—why must I care about that former market?

Since choosing to immigrate overseas, I should detach from the original place in every way.

The physical home has already moved. The online home should move too.

Let me cultivate this small corner of the world well.

983 days ago, you'd never written on Xiaohongshu either, and didn't know you could attract over 20,000 followers.

Starting this year, my words are also going overseas, facing a broader world.

How will I know if I don't try?

这里是中文版。