I think some of the blame has to do with how metrics and analytics started taking over every aspect of online culture (as is hinted at). I noticed I tried to o

I think some of the blame has to do with how metrics and analytics started taking over every aspect of online culture (as is hinted at). I noticed I tried to optimize my blog more when I was using Google Analytics; that whole setup really pushes you to look at certain metrics like time on site, bounce rate, etc. The best decision I've made for blogging sanity a few years back was to switch to a simple self-hosted analytics solution that just focuses on total traffic and referrers, which is mostly helpful to see if a post hit some aggregator like HN or Reddit... but even that's fundamentally a vanity metric.