How I feel about Bear after using it for several months
The deranged Bear "discover" page is always full of people blogging about blogging, and blogging about Bear, sometimes in an "SEO vibes" kind of way, which is one of the main reasons I have not blogged about blogging since moving my blog to Bear. But I figured I finally would because I've been using this site for so long that I'm probably due for some self-examination.
I do like using Bear! I like that it is extremely simple. I like that I have a lot of control over it, but not too much control, because control is responsibility and I don't have time to be too responsible for this website.
The major drawbacks of the site are certainly the lack of a comments section and the lack of a mailing list feature. I had an interesting conversation with some folks last week about how some people do, apparently, use their inbox as a place to receive real information - a lifestyle I have never been able to adopt. My inbox is a war zone and I use RSS specifically in order to receive information in a place that is NOT my email inbox. However, some real percent of humans are using their inbox to receive and then read newsletters?? So the fact that Bear doesn't have this feature is indeed a drawback, I suppose - though one I hadn't previously considered.
Comments are more annoying to me. I was using Komments to get comments on this blog, but I ceased doing this around a month before my most recent game launch, because the game is multiplayer and I wanted players to find it more difficult to contact me individually. (I have experience with how strange "contact the devs" can get for people mad about multiplayer balance.) It's annoying to have to set up a Komments link for each post, and most blogging services with comments do allow you to turn off comments, so a lack of comments does seem to be just a universal drawback here as well. I've had comments "turned off" through inaction for so long that it's not bothering me too much right now, though.
(The people who really want to talk to me have been emailing me! Or messaging me on Discord.)
I think the appeal of Bear is that there really is almost nothing going on here, so it limits the number of ways I can even interact with the site. This has honestly been good for me. I think the state of the material on the Bear "discover" page is a good indicator of why thinking too much about blogging is bad for the brain.
In particular, the analytics page is pretty pared down. I appreciate that. I do not want access to very much information about who is reading this blog. Unless you are contacting me directly I would prefer to simply imagine you as my Ideal Reader, the person who is never pissed off at me for any reason.
I may eventually switch to something else - a process made easier by the fact that everything here is just markdown - but for now I am satisfied. I send no emails. I approve no comments. You can imagine me as a perfectly round, featureless orb-being made of pure energy hovering in midair, with neither qualities nor flaws, and you get precisely one of my thoughts per day - but only if you are wise enough to use an RSS reader. Thank you, ideal reader. You are perfect, and I am too.