The end is nigh

I originally started blogging as reflective practice for my teaching work, but when I got into riding writing about it seemed like a good way to share a new passion and maybe help a few people out if they're stuck with the same technical issues.

TMD is (by far) my most successful blog with almost two million views and posts being published in magazines both in Canada and the UK.

When I first started readership was strong (and human) and every so often someone would recognize me or the bike and ask about the blog, which always felt good. Since COVID readership has fallen, those chance meetings have all but dried up and, from what I can tell, most of the hits these days come from AI engines stealing my words.

On top of that the blogosphere has long since been handed over to corporate marketing schemes that pay 'influencers' to produce (advertising) content that is artificially pushed to the top of your  searches and feeds. Good content earning reader eyeballs is a quaint relic of a bygone internet.

Rather than continue to give away my thoughts to big tech AI engines who are more than happy to burn down countries to raise their bottom line, I'm folding up Tim's Motorcycle Diaries. I'll still be leaning into corners and working on bikes in the garage, but I'm not sharing it to the benefit of this broken internet anymore.

What pushed me into action was reading Cory Doctorow's Enshittification. I'd urge you to buy it from your local independent book shop and give it a read. If you get it from Amazon you'll regret it by chapter five. Having wrapped it up now, I know that things are bad (I knew that already), but I also know that things could improve, which is where I think I'll put my energy.

If you've been reading TMD for a while, thank you for your support. If you think today's internet has anything to do with pointing you to your interests, give your head a shake

Rather than reading the paid for content being fed to you, get out and wrench and ride in the real world. That's where I'll be.

Over 1.7 million page views since 2013... most of those pre-COVID.