1 year on bear
The title is slightly clickbait, as I'm not 100% sure when exactly I originally started this. I've been on here for a while before I became Absurd Pirate, with this blog going under a different name, but I figured it was close enough to the 1 year mark.
So, this is my obligatory 1 year on bear post.
I first found bear because of a video that has since been deleted with the title of something to the effect of "Beginner's Guide to the Personal Web", which is the video where I discovered sites like Agora Road's Macintosh Cafe, Neocities, and of course Bear.
I started with just making my Neocity, and it's gone through several redesigns with the current design being the one I am still working on as of now (as slow as it's going). Eventually I thought it would be fun to start a blog. I dabbled in content creation for years, starting all the way back in like 2011 when I was in middle school, inspired by channels like JohnCJG and Shane Dawson (before he got nuked for being a creep). I was like 12 at the time, made some videos here and there before making one video that got so much hate (a video where I took cardboard and made "juggernaut" armor from it) that I decided to quit and hadn't returned since.
Now I'm a grown man with a mostly developed frontal lobe, and wanted to get back into posting things. I didn't have social media, and was kinda longing for that sort of internet show-and-tell. So, I created my blog.
As mentioned above, this blog originally went under a completely different name. It actually had my IRL name in the title, but decided later on to adopt the Absurd Pirate name. The blog originally was just me yapping about random stuff in my life, hardly anyone read it. I posted pretty infrequently and then went on a bit of a hiatus for about a month or 2, give or take.
I came back and wanted to sort of reinvent myself on this blog. I got inspired by the naming convention of Agora Road's Macintosh Cafe, and so sparked my neocity site Absurd Pirate's Internet Lounge. I then had my blog follow suit which is now Absurd Pirate's Internet Blog. I kinda like this naming convention, kinda reminds me of various video games like Sid Meier's Civilization/Pirates, American McGee's Alice, and so on. My personal channel on the Matrix server for the Grizzly Gazette is Absurd Pirate's Matrix Bedroom.
My first post on the newly rebranded blog was posted June 9th, 2025. Where I detailed the process I took with quitting social media and the positive effects it had on me.
I was a big fan of Ava's blog, I reached out to her at some point asking her questions about how she designed her blog. Things like how she added the little latest/popular posts feed on her home page. She was really helpful and I attribute that moment to being the reason I stayed on Bear.
I wrote pretty consistently, often multiple times per week. Just writing about things I enjoy or life events. Recalling my journey using Linux, going to a protest and escaping a shooting, cackling like a maniac after running over a traffic cone on purpose, shit like that. It felt nice just to get things out with the possibility there is someone out there who would relate and which could potentially spark an internet friendship.
That day would come when I wrote the article detailing all my relationship fuck ups. I got reached out to by some dude named Cris. He mentioned how he related to the post, and invited me to join this little club on discord. I was hesitant at first, I have a tendency to be cynical and thought "yeah, what's the catch?". But when he mentioned that Ava and Kami were there, I decided to hit the fuck-it button and join, and I'm really glad I did.
I had previous interactions with Ava and Kami over email, but joining this little club had me a little star struck as I was a huge fan of both of their blogs and they definitely had viewership that was 10x mine at the time. It felt like interacting with a local celebrity.
I became the 10th member to the Simple Chats discord server.
On the first of September, I brought up to the group about a fun idea of starting a collaborative blog in the spirit of Machinima from back in the day. Where each person has a sort of topic they cover and we all add it to one website. This idea is what snowballed into The Grizzly Gazette. We decided on things like the name and such democratically, Ivan began working on the theme, and Kami worked on our ability to submit posts via email. We launched the Gazette 5 days later.
This little project quickly blew up on Bear, even getting a seal of approval from the man himself, Herman. My post 'Upgrading by Downgrading' was my first post to ever hit trending. I even sparked my first drama on here by replying to Herman's post about Piracy. Essentially biting the hand that feeds. It became a sort of inside joke in the discord server for a bit that Herman essentially has a dart board with one of my avatars pinned to it.
Overall, the project was a pretty big success and it was a joy to write on. I haven't posted there in a while, haven't really thought of an idea that I thought would fit, one day though.
I began to find my voice and writing style. I feel like my early writings were a bit too formal to really sound like 'me'. I started to experiment and let loose on my writing style and try to be as authentic to myself as I possibly could.
My first post on my blog to hit trending I think was my post You're not a "high value" man, you're just a prick. I think this was where my blog started to grow the most. About a month later I wrote my take on the Performative Males trend which also blew up. This was when people started to reach out to me via email, and it was really cool talking with people who liked my work enough to reach out. I'm so used to the internet being a hostile environment that his was a breath of fresh air.
Our friend Cris, the man who introduced me to the community of great people, decided to exit stage left on the internet to prioritize his mental health. Can't say as I blame him. It was sad to see him go, but I hope he's doing well.
By this point the little community of Simple Chats had grown, functionally doubling in size since when I first started, due in large part to the success of the Gazette.
I wrote a post titled your self worth isn't on trending, which ironically got onto trending. This was partially a talk to myself, because I was starting to see some popularity on Bear and didn't want to let that get to my head or diminish my self worth/reasons for blogging in the first place.
My post with the most views to date was the one I wrote in regards to the influx of posts that seemed to be hitting trending which basically was just Hacker News garbage. It got cross-posted and I actually had a brief moment of anxiety where I thought I was gonna have these tech bros wanting my nuts in a jar. Thankfully nothing like that came about.
2026 rolled around, had a few more posts hit trending that I didn't know about till way later. I don't normally know that my post is on the front page of discover until I get a message from one of my friends on here or just randomly check back on a post one day and see it's got like 30+ upvotes.
I started doing more political takes after getting fed up with right-wingers on here talking about shit they clearly know nothing about. With 2 posts going back-to-back on trending. One I think was my most openly hostile to the point it got downranked from the front page. One more dart on the dart board I suppose.
My 2nd heat of drama came from the 2 political posts I made around the time of the whole Trump and Greenland fiasco. These were the ones are what made me realize I'm considered one of the "big ones", or at least that was what one person on their blog said criticizing my post for bullying "the little guys". I was kinda confused because I never really saw myself as that and kinda thought the notion was laughable. I can't remember who exactly, but someone on the server pointed out (after I made a jab at the notion that I'm some sort of micro celebrity), that even they considered me a micro celeb on Bear, similar to Ava. Which still sounds weird to me.
There's an often reoccurring joke on the server that I'm in this back-and-forth competition with Ava to see who can get the most posts on trending at one time. Which is not something I ever thought would come around when I first started blogging on here.
My first post to ever hit 100 upvotes was why i love my low-traffic blog, which in hindsight is a bit ironic with even Suliman joking that I'm not exactly "low-traffic" with the readership I seem to be getting. He even marks this as the point at which my blog really started to take off.
I then proceeded to write 2 more posts that hit trending, basically making back-to-back-to-back posts to hit the front page.
I don't think all that highly of myself. So for me it always comes as a shock when a post of mine hits trending because I just feel like I write stuff and just throw it out there. I basically write everything in a single sitting and hit post, often coming back to fix typos that Kami points out. I just say shit and sometimes it strikes a chord with people on here. Can't wait to see a post titled "I'm tired of Absurd Pirate Slop".
Got into my 3rd heat of drama from yet another round of political posts I commented on. It kinda started with someone writing a braindead take that ripped on my wee boy Mono that Suliman proceeded to rip into. That person then replied to Suliman ripping into him. The back-and-forth got shared in the discord server, so me being me I decided to verbally dropkick this asshole. They tried to play the victim like all rightoids with their pathetic pearl clutching about hurling insults at them. They have no problems spitting hate, but when they get rightfully called a douchebag they get all butthurt about it. It's basically that scene in the Bee movie where that lawyer starts stirring shit, gets stung, and then starts being over dramatic rolling on the floor. That's what these piss-for-brains-wannabe-fascists act like.
This seemed to spark several other people commenting on the situation, all windmill dunking on this person. Wrote another post that kinda became a sequel to the previous post that served as a rhetorical T-bagging.
And that brings me to now. God what a journey it's been.
I guess I wanna first thank you for reading all of this. It was kinda fun going back down memory lane, pulling up old discussions from the server and looking back at some of the posts I wrote.
This blog has grown in a way that my older self wouldn't believe, barely seeing over 10 upvotes on a good day to now regularly seeing 50+. I just wanna thank you personally if you've enjoyed my writings, for all the people that reached out via email, the people that signed my guestbook and wrote in my neocities chat, all of it really does mean a lot to me.
I sometimes read emails I get from people who read my blog to my wife, which sounds silly I know, but I hope that shows how much I really do appreciate all of it.
I love this platform, I love it's simplicity, and I love the community it's fostered.
I write for the love of the game, and I hope that reflects in my writing. I have no plans of ever stopping this blog. I've had way too much fun with it, and it's been a place for me to find some catharsis.
So here's to 1 year on bear, and to many more to come.
Reply via email: me@absurdpirate.com
as of writing this...
woke up this morning not wanting to get out of bed. My wife and I got new bedsheets that are luxury hotel soft. I like sleeping a cold room so that I can bundle myself all warm under my weighted blanket and the comforter. Coupled with my recently acquired buckwheat pillow that has functionally fixed waking up with neck pain, I sleep pretty soundly at night these days. So when my alarm went off the thought of "do I really need a job?" popped into my head. If the lure of the One Ring feels anything like trying to pull yourself out of your comfy bed in the early morning, I fully understand why Frodo kept falling prey to it. I've been slacking on my journal a bit as well. I tend to keep it in my work backpack, but that is probably the worst place to put it for my ADHD brain with its tendency to go into the out-of-site-out-of-mind pattern. Oh well.