Will Blogs Survive the Rise of AI?
If you’re reading this, it means you’re still choosing people. You scrolled past the auto-generated headlines and bypassed the answers stacked like sardines in cans and you didn’t just want information…you wanted a voice, something that felt alive, a story.
Of course, this is obviously very sensitive and important for me. As I edit this piece I’ve currently published over 800 articles on my blog to date. That massive archive of articles kept me going on days where I felt like nothing was going right in my life. These blog posts gave me hope when the storm clouds came rolling in, ominously and faster than I cared for. When the sun was hiding behind those clouds, I escaped into my blog. I ran away into the science that thrills my soul and the facts that make me smile.
So for just one moment, I want to begin sitting on the fact that it’s a quiet miracle that we’re even here…me, writing this, and you, reading it…across a sea of simulated sameness.
That’s what the internet is starting to feel like, isn’t it?
It’s the same questions and a bunch of the same answers, the same glossed-up content is being poured from the same machine.
But here I am…still blogging for three hours a day.
My family thinks I’m crazy some days, and my husband tells me to take more time off, but not all writing is about ranking. Some writing is about remembering and finding yourself.
The Robots Came for Google
First, they came for the search engines, these AI tools that promised you’ll never need to Google again.
"Just ask," they say, "we’ll summarize the entire internet for you, no problemooo." Okay, I think they speak a little more formally than that, but you catch my drift.
The thing is, people did ask, and they still do, but what they found is a bunch of quick answers, but no depth. There are lists, but no longing in AI generated answers. They can spit out facts faster than I could even pick which Google page to click on, but there’s no fingerprints.
You can ask AI anything, and it’ll give you an answer, but it won’t look you in the eyes and tell you the story of how it found that information. I know that my meandering ways of answering questions sometimes make people impatient (you should read my article about what Terroir is…sorry in advance), but those stories are why my information sticks in peoples’ minds. I mean, how could you forget my answer when it’s been dressed up with a fifteen minute tangent about how this one time I called maple tree farmers to figure out why the moon cycles matter with sap flow?
Why I Still Blog in the Age of Synthetics
I blog because I still believe in the tender authority of experience. I write stories because trauma still needs translation, and I don’t want anyone out there to ever feel as alone as I did the months after my trauma changed my life. I write stories because tomatoes still taste different in real dirt and the ones at the store taste like water, and everyone should know that.
My blog is alive because I believe that wine still carries the soul of soil, and the charts explaining the chemical composition of the dirt will never make you feel the way my stories will.
People don’t just want to know the answer to their questions…they want to feel known and understand the how, the why, and all aspects of their question. The messiness of being a person is being polished and shined by machines until our own inadequacies look worse and worse. Sometimes it’s nice to see others are out there with their rough edges just as much as we are.
A blog isn’t just an article to me, it’s a threshold where I invite a bunch of strangers into my world and my mind and invite them to stay for some tea (or decaf cappuccinos). I want to tell people the stories that matter to me and why I’m passionate about the things that light me up inside. Life is so full of dullness, I’m eager to help spread something that isn’t boring and maybe not so pretty, but is real and honest and raw.
AI can mimic that, but it can’t mean it, not really.
Will search look different in five years…yeah of course it will. Will blogs rank lower on some pages, probably yes, I’m sure they will. Will AI try to answer every question before we even click on anything, absolutely.
But readers are changing, too, and that’s something to remember. They’re tired of empty calories and starved for stories. A lot of people out there on the interwebs are seeking out specific messy and imperfect voices, because that’s what they can relate to.
People still want to know what it’s like to grieve while gardening or taste a wine that reminds you of your mother, or try to grow a business from borrowed soil and borrowed time. That’s what I write, that’s what blogs like this offer, and no AI can compete with lived truth.
But What About SEO?
Excellent question, and one I’ve been struggling with myself lately. Here’s what I know though, Google will always shift. Algorithms will always try to outsmart the heart, but people still search for more than answers. They’re online to search for connections, whether or not they realize it.
SEO, when done right, isn’t just about keywords, that’s just how it’s all sorted, it’s about clarity. SEO is about meeting people where they are and gently guiding them somewhere deeper.
When your content helps others, or heals a little piece of someone who needed to hear your words, or honors the question beneath the question…then Google still notices, and more importantly, so do readers.
My blog doesn’t just answer questions…it frames them in ways even those looking for answers might not have thought of yet. I tell stories of how I found things out that make people giggle. My humor, my heartbreak, hell even my word choice reaches out through pixels and time and space and can touch someone across the world, someone I will probably never even meet.
Readers come back because they know me (or they feel like they do!). I’ve lived the wine, the trauma, the tomatoes, a ton of other experiences unique to me that you might not have. That’s actually a great thing.
AI will get better, I have no doubt in my mind about that, but it will never be a person.
Blogging as Resistance
Some days, hitting “publish” feels like planting a seed in asphalt…more trouble than it’s worth. Then sometimes, someone sends me a nice message that makes me smile, or I see the same IP address visiting the same story for three days in a row, sometimes people even share my posts on social media.
That’s not an algorithm, that’s a soul touching another soul. I cherish every email I get from my readers (well, not the mean ones maybe!).
In this era of artificial everything, a blog feels like a cute little rebellion. I was here, I felt this, and maybe you did, too.
I’m still here. I’ve thought about quitting more times than I can count. I said I have over 800 articles live? Well, I’ve probably thought about quitting around 700 times by now. There are easier ways to be seen, faster ways to go viral, quicker platforms, and louder formats.
But blogs aren’t for the quick (which I am not), they’re for the keepers.
Blogs are for the readers who sit still long enough to hear the heartbeat in the paragraph, they’re for the writers who still believe the world can be softened, one sentence at a time.
So yes, the robots are rising, but I’m still writing, and you’re still reading, so the blog isn’t dead. It’s more alive than ever, the world just hasn’t caught on yet. I’ll be here when it does.
