[gwerbret]

As has been pointed out elsewhere, there are certainly authentic blogs out there, and lots of them. However, when the author says

> Remember when blogs were raw, unfiltered windows into someone’s mind?

what actually comes to mind are the blogs that were, in essence, public diaries written by entirely ordinary people. These weren't topic-focused tech blogs about running a startup or hacking with Python, but were, well, diaries; and some of them were fascinating insights into how people lived their lives, warts and all. Blogger hosted a lot of these blogs at one time (and likely still does, since somehow this is a project Google has yet to ship to its graveyard), and the header of the base template most people used had a button you could click on to send you on to another random blog.

Unlike the topical blogs, these diary blogs essentially no longer exist. I suspect that one major reason for their demise -- other than the fact that the world has moved on, as it does -- is the transition of the bulk of people's computing from desktops/laptops to phones. It's just too difficult to put out long-form text of any sort on a mobile device.