A MONTH OFF

Holy cow another month has shot by at breakneck speed

Arriving at the half million hits count was monumental in an insignificant little blogger gets his day in the sun sort of way, but every once in a while I feel the need to have a month off blogging and all social media use.

September is going to be my month off. If I have an urge to write anything profound I'll postpone it’s publication by a month.

What this break will do as much as anything is reveal how addicted I am to looking at crap online.

Like a moth to a flame I keep looking at rubbish on Youtube and Facebook, even though I'm well aware that it’s not doing me any good.

My September challenge is to stop looking at YouTube and Facebook, to stop using Wifi, and to stop doing any blog posts. I want to replace those activities with more productive things (I have quite a list!). Hopefully by October 1 will have established a more productive and efficient approach to my computer and internet use

Bakson

HALF A MILL

It's been eight years since I had a blog that was pumping, so I'm getting a buzz out of seeing my SIFT blog suddenly take off and start getting thousands of hits each day

I haven't really been doing anything different on it so there is no obvious reason why it would.

Truth is I've just been plugging along posting pretty much the same sort of content at about the same pace for the past three years so I have no idea why the hits have suddenly taken off again over the past few months, but it's cool to see.

It may not last long, so I'll enjoy it while it lasts.

OK I do have three theories. First the boring one :

#1 GRADUAL ORGANIC GROWTH

Maybe over time my blog has slowly built up a following, and it took three years, but now it has finally picked up some momentum.

The second idea is more interesting, because it even dabbles in a conspiracy theory.


#2 OPERATION CHAOS Mk11

 

For the past few hundred years most social programming has been fairly simple.

Just tell the clueless masses a bunch of utter bullshit which makes them easier to control and exploit.

That approach mainly involves hiding anything that's true and filling their heads with crap.

If anyone was saying things like "Germ theory is bullshit" or "The first lady is a tranny", then that stuff needed to be censored and covered up quickly.

But since late 2024 Operation Chaos Mk.II has been in full swing and the aim is to create as much confusion and uncertainty as possible.

All of a sudden the objective is no longer to stick to the official narrative and censor any non approved content. The objective now is to promote the official narratives (which are all utter bullshit) while at the same time actively promoting some actual truth, because that combination causes total confusion.

If that is what is now going on, the agenda is no longer to try to bury the truth, on the contrary, it's to boost the living shot out of it.

So in these days of chaos it's quite possible that Israeli deep state corporations like Google are actively promoting some true content as well as all the bullshit.

As recently as 2024 I used to have to rotate four different Facebook accounts because they were constantly being suspended, but now I can pretty much post anything I want and it generally all goes uncensored.

Maybe that is what's now happening with my blog posts too.

That idea is kind of cool, because the third idea is a bit of a mood Killer.

 

#3 DEAD INTERNET THEORY


Maybe it's true that the internet is gradually dying because all the actual people are being replaced with AI. 

In fact that's clearly happening on platforms like YouTube where all the hits and comments, along with most of the content, is very obviously AI

What if Google Analytics is just tricking me into thinking I'm getting thousands of hits every day, when in reality I'm getting bugger all real hits and they are all just fake AI like the hits on a Taylor Swift video.

A half baked conclusion

There is no way to know for sure, but #2, the Operation Chaos theory, is
the most entertaining one for me so I'll run with that for now.

None of those three theories is exactly awesome, as either I'm popular because I'm a boring old fart who has been plugging away for years, or the deep state is using me as a puppet, or the entire internet is completely fucked.

Nevermind, it's too bad, half a million hits is a milestone and I'm going to celebrate it even if I'm a boring old puppet whose primary communication platform is fucked.

 

  

COMPUTER ADDICTION

Computer use is highly addictive. My own digital use is not exactly typical because I've never used phones for any online activities. In fact my phone use only adds up to about 5 minutes a week in total which sounds damn good, but that figure glosses over all my other computer use.

I use my PC (running Linux Mint with a 32" screen) for several hours every day, and also regularly use my laptop (running Linux Mint with a 17" screen), as well as using my 12" Samsung tablet for several more hours most days.

I mention all those screen sizes because I hate small screens and that is another reason I very seldom use phones.

But it's not all random internet or social media addiction. For example I often use my tablet as a writing pad, using an S-Pen with the app MyScript converting my hand writing to text. 

And I also use my tablet as a replacement for physical books, because I have around 12 thousand ebooks, so it's like having my own library, along with my own typist.

I think there is a solid difference between computer addictions like social media and gaming, and using computers effectively for things like research or writing.

But even so, all computer use clearly has negative side effects, both physical and mental, without even delving into what all the effects of the EMF exposure actually is.

It's easy to not even notice how much time we spend using computers. In the 90’s I spent zero time using computers, because I didn't have one, but these days I struggle to keep my combined computer use under four hours a day.

I'm not too bothered about time I spend offline because that is mostly under my own control and reading an ebook or using an S-Pen isn't really much different to reading a book or using a notebook.

But anything online is a potential problem. There is some handy stuff available online, but most of that shit is messing with my head!

If I was going to set a time limit what would it be?

If I'm awake for 16 hours a day, the. four hours a day would be a quarter of all my waking moments. Put like that, even that amount sounds excessive.

At this stage I'm not going to include offline time which can actually be quite productive and creative when used within reason, but online time I want to cap at four hours a day maximum.

Wifi use is even worse and I want to place strict limits on my use of WIFI - one hour a day really should be quite enough of that.
 

I'm going to have next month off all social media including blogging.

The only social media platforms I look at are Odysee, Youtube, and Facebook. 

 

Youtube and Facebook are both filled with AI slop and I was unhappy about wasting around 30 mins a day looking at them. So to me these figures of adults spending over four hours a day on social media are mind boggling! 

As with all things internet, it's hard to know if any of the stats are genuine because the majority of internet use is now AI, but the statistics being quoted for social media use are incredibly high.

If these figures are remotely accurate, this would all be extremely unhealthy.

Time Spent On Social Media Demographics:

Teenagers (aged 13 to 17) tend to spend the most time on social media compared to any age group as of this year.

On average, teenagers spend around 8 hours and 39 minutes per day on screens. Social media usage is their top activity during this. Meanwhile, young adults (aged 18 to 29) spend around 7 hours and 22 minutes on their screens, and their top activity is social media usage.

Tweens (aged 8 to 12) also have a significantly high screen time these days, with an average of 5 hours and 33 minutes, up from 4 and 44 minutes a couple of years back. However, their top activity is video streaming, and social media comes second.

Adults (30 to 49) and older adults (50+) spend the least time on social media. On average, adults spend around 4 to 5 hours on screen.

https://newvisiontheatres.com/time-people-spend-on-social-media

 

WHAT WAS I THINKING?

 For some reason I've never had what could be described as singular focus. Staying focused on one thing at a time has never been my strong point. Making connections between multiple different things is more my gig.

All the clueless computer geeks that kept their operating systems perfectly maintained during the covidhoax while submitting their own bodies to toxic death jabs because they were scared of an imaginary virus, along with all the obedient normies doing whatever retarded bullshit they were told to, were perfect examples of why only understanding one thing at a time is not good.

But I do sometimes need to reduce the range of things I'm looking at and stay a bit more focused. It's all a balancing act.

I had a totally deranged idea that I would have five separate Blogger blogs, and that one of them would be a complete updated version of my original "FROT" WordPress blog.

There was a reason for wanting to do that, but with the benefit of hindsight it was a terrible idea, so I'm going to put it back in my archived ideas file and not do that at all.

Updating 750 old blog posts is time consuming and boring, and I soon discovered once I started doing it that I can't be arsed.  So I'm going to flag that idea. But when I stumble upon any of my old posts that still float my boat I'll continue to throw copies of them on here and that's what the "frot" tag is all about

My SIFT blog has been going nuts this month, regularly racking up more than 3000 hits a day, which is the most hits I've had since my old FROT blog was at it's peak in 2018. 

Any other blogs I try to build up at this stage will only get a fraction of that traffic so there is no point spreading my focus too thin. For now SIFT is going off!

From now on I'm only going to keep updating SIFT and put my other blogs on hold. And I'm also going to pretty much give up looking at all social media for a while because I've had a guts-full of AI slop.

My old FROT blog posts can stay where they are for now, and may even be able to stay there for years to come. But I probably won't be attempting to update any more of them.  

A FULL CIRCLE

Back in the 90's I was checking out a cool new clothing brand called SHIFT. I guess the name stood for a shift to a new more advanced state of awesomeness or something.

Looking at the SHIFT Logo I was Inspired to set up a website (we didn't used to call them blogs back then) called SIFT, meaning to sift around looking for interesting stuff.

I removed the H from shift and made my own versions of the logo in red & blue & purple rather than grey. When my blog later became quite popular I ended up printing SIFT T-shirts in a range of colours!

Around that time I also started going by the online alias SIFT but often found when I was signing up for accounts on platforms like g-mail that the name SIFT was already taken.

Even back then I was aware that there were try hard satanists lurking all over the internet and the circular logo of Google stood for 666, so I started calling myself “sift666” because that name was usually available. 

Actually I started calling myself about a dozen different online names but the sift666 one stuck.

Later, on a new blockchain platform, my sift666 name worked out very well because a bunch of the insiders fancied themselves as satanists, and thought I must be one of them as well. 

That was great for a while but I didn't realise that they really did consider themselves to be actual satanists. I thought they were just mocking the retarded satanists like I was, and we were all on the same page. Up until I did a post openly ridiculing satanists, and all of a sudden I was the anti-satan, so I was blacklisted from the platform.

Jump forward a decade and a friend started calling me “sifty”, meaning someone who lurks about not getting much done. A very appropriate name really.

Then I told her about my old blog where I used to have 800 misspelled porn search tags aimed at attracting illiterate google porn searchers, which got millions of hits up until Google blacklisted it. Notice a pattern here?

Anyway, after hearing that, she started calling me “shifty”, as in someone dodgy and cunning, who tricks satanic corporations online. Even more appropriate!

Then I realised I've nearly gone full circle from SHIFT to SIFT, and onward to SIFTY and then SHIFTY which is nearly right back to SHIFT again.

Over the past decade my blog hits have gone down from hundreds of thousands per year to bugger all, but now they seem to be going back up again.

After nearly three decades of battling my evil nemesis Google online, I've come to the conclusion that Google may be evil but I am shifty.

 

WHY I USE BLOGGER

I'm certainly no fan of Google, my evil online nemesis, but having posted on WordPress quite a lot in the past, along with a few other platforms, I am still a fan of Blogger. This article is a good summary of what I like about it:
 

Is Blogger Still a Thing in 2026?

Blogger remains a relevant platform even in a highly competitive 2026 market. It has earned a well-deserved spot in online publishing for a reason. It is an excellent platform for newbie bloggers who are kicking off new blogs and want to get their content established online. 

The fact is that Blogger’s official positioning is surprisingly clear and current for 2026, and that is one of the primary reasons why it has remained relevant to this day. 

Blogger is a free tool where you can create a blog, choose your unique design, publish on a Blogspot address or a custom domain, and earn through AdSense if eligible. 

On top of all that, it offers ample opportunity to understand your readers through built-in analytics, to connect to Google Analytics, and safely store posts and photos with Google.

Blogger is home to millions of publishers, which is clear proof that it is far from a forgotten early web tool. The platform offers bloggers and influencers many benefits thanks to its clear positioning.

The moment you stop looking at Blogger through its trend value and start seeing it for its practical value, you will quickly realise its purpose. 

In 2026, the discussion around blogging and content creation is focused on ecosystems, subscriptions, newsletters, communities, and content machines. Yes, some creators do need those things. But as it stands, there are also many who don’t. 

A lot of creators simply want a dependable place to publish their hard and thoughtful work. They also want to be able to organise their work and build an archive that is not locked inside a feed. That is exactly the sort of job Blogger still does well.

What Makes Blogger Relevant Today

Blogger remains a well-used blogging site because it has a very low barrier to entry for first-time users, using its standard functions. 

That means you don’t have to pay for web-hosting or find your own template for your blog; you can start by choosing from a variety of pre-designed templates, changing their layout to suit your needs, post content quickly, and if you decide you want a more polished image, you are free to change that BlogSpot domain name to something else. 

The information on the “about page” is very straightforward and does not overcomplicate the feature mentioned above. Blogger offers simple publishing, flexible design, audience insights, payment through AdSense if that is applicable to your purpose and long-term storage through Google. Simplicity will always be useful and appealing.

There is also a wider cultural reason Blogger still matters. There are many digital platforms available today that provide individuals the opportunity to share their ideas and expertise, but few allow the individual to truly control how others view and use that shared material. 

While social media may be a great place for people to discover new content and authors, it is a rented space. Therefore, if the algorithm associated with the rental platform changes overnight, the author may find themselves with much less visibility for their work. 

Similarly, yesterday’s posts are often lost after just a few days online. By contrast, Blogger provides each individual with a fixed location on the internet where they can store their thoughts and opinions over time. Blogs are particularly valuable for writers, niche commentators, hobbyist experts, lifestyle publishers and small-scale creators who desire something more enduring than simply having a profile page. 

Blogger still offers that without demanding a complicated technical setup first.



Influencer Success Stories On Blogger

We can demonstrate how Blogger works with influence by looking at real-world success stories. A good starting point would be Diana Rikasari. Her Blogspot site has been up for years now; her description of herself at Blogger lists her as an award-winning blogger, fashion entrepreneur, and published author. She is also a public speaker, and has been active in the blogosphere since 2007. 

An independent academic paper on personal branding examined how bloggers create their own identities using fashion blogging as a vehicle for that process; the authors use Diana Rikasari’s blog as one of their case studies, concluding that her blog was successful in communicating her unique identity. 

Together, those sources show Blogger functioning as a genuine platform for influence, not merely a stepping stone buried in internet folklore.

It is helpful to evaluate an even smaller, contemporary model. Not all creators are attempting to create or achieve celebrity status. They just want an online space to get their work out there. But even if your goal is not to make it as a big-time blogger you may still get noticed in a big way. 

Seadbeady’s Fashion and Beauty Blog, which runs on Blogspot, describes itself explicitly as both a platform for bloggers and influencers. This Blogspot-based blog covers fashion, beauty, product reviews, interviews with other creators, and more. 

In a 2025 post, Seadbeady stated they were able to grow their blogger site from a handful of views a month to over 10,000 views per month on average and at that stage were working in promotional capacity for several beauty boxes, including those by L’Oréal, Garnier and Maybelline. 

That is a realistic kind of success story: niche authority, steady visibility, and collaboration opportunities built from a Blogger site rather than a huge media operation.

Blogger does not have to dominate the creator economy to remain effective. It simply has to help the right people build recognition, consistency, and credibility in a space they control. 

For many of us, establishing ourselves as legitimate voices within our respective areas of interest is far more important than chasing whatever social media outlet happens to be screaming the loudest surrounding its marketing efforts.

Blogger Vs. Newer Blogging Platforms

Compared with newer publishing options, Blogger is a less ambitious choice. It was never intended to be built on top of high-end membership, paid community models or endless customised designs. 

It is fair to mention this because you can only truly appreciate Blogger if you take it directly for the need it’s intended to serve. A writer looking to build a subscription-based business model, a paid community model or a highly-tailored design system will likely find one of the newer platforms to better meet their needs. That is not a failure on Blogger’s part. It is simply a matter of fit.

Blogger still has advantages that outmatch newer platforms in terms of ease, simplicity and cost. It provides a way to get writers online quickly. Custom domains are supported by Blogger. The purpose of Blogger is not to try to surpass each and every other newer publishing platform. It provides a simpler alternative that many users find more practical.

Key Features Influencers Appreciate

The most important key features that have attracted some influencers and personal brand owners to the Blogger platform — its ability to be visually representative of an influencer’s professionalism and an understanding of how well a blog post will perform. 

The first, a “custom domain”, is possibly the largest feature that makes an influencer appear much more professional than those who use a free BlogSpot.com address.

Blogger’s ability to provide flexibility in terms of design is important too, even if it isn’t stated with flashy wording. The blogger “about” section provides information on easily usable templates, flexible layouts and a variety of background image options. 

This might seem unexciting compared to newer sites based on an abundance of creative visual tools, but a great deal of these influencers do not require an endless number of ways to visually manipulate their space. They want a simple, recognisable area that represents them and allows their content to shine through. In this respect, Blogger still delivers that.

Audience insight is another feature offered by Blogger. Users have the ability to evaluate performance of individual posts via analytics built into the blogging software, where your visitors come from, and what subjects your visitors are most interested in learning about. 

You can also connect directly to Google Analytics for additional details. Understanding your audience can prove valuable to creators who are trying to determine their niche, understand their audience behaviours, and develop pitches for potential collaborations. 




Building A Loyal Audience With Blogger

Audiences are created through consistent, useful content, as well as an individual’s sense of belonging. The long-term nature of Blogger allows for this type of loyalty to be developed. Not only does Blogger allow for the ability to save thousands of posts, photos, etc. with Google, but it also promotes the idea of developing a permanent website archive.

This type of archive will help convert casual browsers into regular readers. Casual browsers may arrive through searching a specific topic or linking from a social media platform. Someone who arrives through search or a social link is not limited to one passing update. They can view all your previous categorised blogs and get a better feel of your voice and expertise. 

Whether or not Blogger is still something to consider is based on what your goals are. If you want instant viral fame, then using Blogger would not provide an immediate solution. However, if you want to develop a loyal audience by creating a transparent, easily accessible, and owned repository of work, then I think it makes perfect sense.

 

How Blogger Supports Brand Collaborations

Brand collaboration efforts often happen even before an email exchange. A blogger’s site serves as evidence of their style, dependability, and transparency. If Blogger is used with intent, it will be able to support these aspects exceptionally well. 

A custom domain name, a professional-looking home page, organised categories of topics you write about, and an easy-to-navigate archives section. All of these items assist brands to understand who you are and how you express yourself. Blogger’s own structure supports exactly that sort of presentation.

There is also a strong operational reason to have your cooperative work live on a blog. Content posted on social media moves very quickly and is easily missed. 

Blog posts allow for fuller storytelling, more comprehensive background information, and active links, which will continue to provide value to your readers after the initial campaign has ended. That is beneficial in markets like beauty, fashion, travel, books, interior design and lifestyle where your audience may want something other than just a quick endorsement. 

A Blogger site gives those collaborations more room to breathe and more chances to keep delivering value long-term.




Tips For Maximising Blogger’s Potential

The creators who get the most from Blogger usually do not treat it as a relic or a backup plan. They use it as a central hub. The way to maximise your use of Blogger is through the selection of a clean template, registration of a custom domain, organising your home page clearly, and organising your content so readers know what your website is about. 

This level of creative freedom with both the look and feel of your website and insights into your audience allows you to create that type of organised space without making setup feel like a separate job.

Thinking editorially can also help. Most blogs benefit more from having a handful of strong cornerstone pieces versus flooding their site with low-quality, quick-hit articles. Archives are usually created intentionally. Categories have meaning. Titles are descriptive. 

Articles that were once valuable but have become outdated are often updated instead of deleted. When using social media, short-form content can provide links to richer content available on your blog. Blogger tends to work best when it is the place where ideas live in full, while faster platforms handle discovery and conversation. That combination still makes a lot of sense.

Blogger is still worth taking seriously in 2026. And yes, it is because it still does something specific really well. It still provides creators the fundamental building blocks of creating and maintaining their own space online.

This is why Blogger has secured its place. The ability it gives creators to clearly publish, steadily build up content and maintain ownership of their published work.

For writers, niche experts, hobbyists and influencers wanting to have a reliable and long-term base on the open web, that remains a viable option in 2026. 

This is an edited copy of a post from bloggertuesday

11 THINGS I UPVOTE

 When I’m upvoting stuff online, here are 11 things I’m always on the lookout for:

Colour

We may all be just be cogs in the machine, but at least we can be colourful cogs

“Cogs.23” by fROt – spraypaint on canvas with digital editing

 

Humour

Wherever we may be, funny as fuck is just around the corner

 

Controversy

Our history books are full of shit, so let’s start flinging some shit right back at the fuckers trying to spoon feed us lie upon lie (and that includes ALL politicians, every last one of of the worthless lying maggots)

 

Photography

There’s nothing quite like gawking at some photos – a gateway to other worlds

 

Conspiracy

But keep in mind “they” are playing both sides – basic tactics 101

 

Art

In the digital age we can all be artists – let's make some shapes

“Naked In A Field” by fROt – Crayon on paper with digital editing

 

Creativity

There is an entire world out there – get off your fucking phones and fill it with colour

 

Fun

If the end is nigh, and we are all fucked, and we are going to end our days beaten into submission – we can still have some fun before we shrivel up and die…

 

Pictures

Less words, more pictures – stop trying to bore each other’s pants off with endless tossfest word salads

 

Memes

One of the fastest way to transmit ideas in an age of information overload is with memes

 

Interesting Shit

You know – the opposite of boring shit…

 

OK, that’s enough to start with!

Posts don’t have to be boring, drab, colourless, humourless, communist approved shit…

 

There are many ways the powers that shouldn’t be can turn us into pathetic, muzzle wearing, broken arse gimps, living on our knees and begging to suck their cocks.

 

 

Seeking their approval and bending over for hand outs is one of the ways we allow them to control us…

FUCK THE MAN!

https://peakd.com/proofofbrain/@frot/10-things-im-up-voting-like-fuck-on-proof-of-brain

 This content was previously posted on FROT, June 9, 2021