Does the web really work that way though?

Maybe it does for your historical reference example, like a CV. If we presumed that those pages with that content would get any traction at all.

Generally the way it's working is people continually pump out content, big tech algos surface it to other people and within a few days those pages don't receive any visitors at all.

If you have a great channel where people see that link, great. But most information discovery is via the big tech algos.

> and within a few days those pages don't receive any visitors at all.

I think you're maybe talking about publishing things for different reasons, the quoted part kind of gives me that impression.

If the point is to get as many visitors as possible then yeah, just pumping out MVPs/concepts/hacks/prototypes might not be the best idea. But if your reasons are different, the amount of visitors might not even matter.

As many visitors as possible, not really. Just a channel where you may get interested visitors.

The point isn't about pumping out content to please the algorithms, it is that the algorithms prefer that constant churn of it, and it's overwhelmingly the method of information discovery on the web.

If the only viewer of my blog posts is myself (and often times it is), then I'd still keep writing if only just to keep a public journal of my thought process and things that I accomplished at certain times in my life.

Same here.

to be fair, that could be called a diary. I would guess the average person thinking about publishing in public thinks about other people seeing it.

Also fair, but most of the time the other people are a few close friends. I'm not trying to keep it a secret like a diary but I'm also not trying to get incredibly popular like a content creator or famous blogger.