What not to do in 2024 as a Tech Blogger
Inspired by previous posts and popular clickbait listicles, I recently wrote a blog post headed “24 Antipatterns to Avoid in 2024 🚫2️⃣0️⃣2️⃣4️⃣🚫 🤖💩🤡🤯”, mocking blatant language and poor quality of said posts that still get too much attention and can mislead juniors by giving outdated advice.
Some antipatterns to avoid in 2024 or any time in the future, and why you should care: if you have a serious point and profound knowledge, you don’t want to be misunderstood as a mock tech influencer.
1. Adding “2024” or any other future date 🔮
I did it here to demonstrate folly and futility but used to do it unironically.
Putting the current year in a post title can be informative. Trying to preview future development makes sense when announcing long-term events or feature roadmaps. However, trying to predict trends is mostly overrated and futile and only serves as a tacky strategy for search engine optimization. I plead guilty: I wrote “Nothing new in ‘22” and “What not to expect from 2022 as a Web Developer” in December 2021, and now I blog about 2024 while my constructive criticism is ageless and will probably still be valid in 2025.
2. Consistently posting anything everywhere
Some people will post anything. I hope this parody post has some entertaining value in demonstrating the absurdity of some popular stylistic devices. Still, it’s sad that most community and social media websites reward quantity over quality in a merely quantitative sense of “consistency”.
I don't know about posting the same content everywhere. That’s rather a marketing problem if you have something to say.
Make sure that you own your content and post it first on your own blog or website so that subsequent re-posts and variations will be treated as duplicate content. Sharing and advertising content on alternative places and communities can be helpful to reach an additional audience.
If possible, state your origin post URL as the “canonical” one using a canonical META tag as described in Google’s post, or by filling a form often hidden in some advanced “more settings” -> “this content has been posted somewhere else before” -> add URL hoping that people won’t use it.
3. Overusing “artificial intelligence” 🤖💩🤡
Some people will even post text output from chatGPT and other bullshit generators. If you do, at least do some fact-checking! I saw posts that quote chatGPT, put the prompt in their headline and added, “What’s your answer?” Maybe some human being will help them eventually.
We can make use of so-called AI and language processing tools.
Without Grammarly, my English would probably be worse.
ChatGPT, Copilot, Bard and other assistive technologies can help humans do their jobs when we use them as tools and learn how to use them properly. Human intelligence, ethics, experience and intuition should never be replaced by blind trust or lazy copy+paste strategies.
Here are some more good reasons why I’m not excited about so-called artificial intelligence, a sceptical rant with some rare recommendations after taking a closer look at Dall-e and Midjourney when they started to make a buzz in 2022.
4. Overusing listicles 0️⃣1️⃣2️⃣…🔟
5. … and superlatives everyone must read!!!1
Why do numbered lists attract readers? Listicles have been mocked as a typical clickbait cliché, but post titles like “24 things every dev MUST know in 2024 — no. 24 will …” seem to appeal to readers. But why?
6. — 24. Overpromising
Don’t fuel expectations that you know you can’t keep! I wanted to show an off-by-one example by adding number 5 to a 4-item list, but 6 out of 24 is even better!
That’s all. Feel free to like this post and subscribe to my DEV channel — but be warned: most of my DEV blog posts are serious contributions about web development, with a few funny or sarcastic exceptions like this one!
Conclusion
Please avoid these common blogging antipatterns to prevent getting misunderstood for a want-to-be / mock “tech influencer,” annoying readers who have been around for a while and confusing those who haven’t!
P.S.
A similar post was originally published as “24 Antipatterns to Avoid in 2024 🚫2️⃣0️⃣2️⃣4️⃣🚫 🤖💩🤡🤯” by the same author.
