I recently went to an old blog that I like but is never updated. It was made by a circuit bender, a really good one, who would add loads to the circuitry/controls, and the results were always aesthetically pleasing. I'd visit probably once every six months to a year, and having learned a bit about electronics in that time I could glean a little more from the writeups and half-schematics.

And now it's gone. Deleted!

Of course the creator of the site had no idea I'd found it so useful and inspiring, and there are fees for hosting a website. And of course there's the wayback machine. But more and more I'm finding wonderful old sites with dead links and broken images.

There are no broken images on social media, however. Most blogs I'm thinking of died in the mid-late 00s. Seeing a crazy DIY synth on the socialz™ begs the question for me: what did the maker find so exciting about this thing in particular? How did they get into this? Care to share any schematics? And why do I, the user, feel like scrolling instead of actually asking these questions?

I am (like a lot of people right now I imagine) sensing a lack of community. And of course it's not necessarily my intention that fosters that, but the tools I use.