When Does a Thru Hike Become a Slave to the Trail Journals

[Praha4]

A question for other long distance hikers who have kept Trail Journals ...

a. Did you ever begin to feel pressured on your hike.... to do a Trail Journal (or other Trail Journal-like social media) ?

b. If yes, why were you feeling that pressure?
(1) Family and friends requesting updates
(2) Your online "fans" posting comments
(3) Putting pressure on yourself to maintain an "interesting" or "entertaining" Trail Journal, with lots of pics

I'm curious, because I've met many hikers on the AT who talk about feeling pressured to entertain their TJ or Facebook "fans" or "friends", to post interesting TJ or FB entries, and pressure to hike higher miles each day, as if the hike is a race, and the hiker feels a need to impress others on how many miles they are cranking out. Then I've seen this on some journals post-hike, where numerous TJ entries give the impression the hiker was doing the hike for the Journal and misses the daily diary entries and fan following. Not knocking these folks, cuz many of these Journals are filled with helpful info to fellow hikers.

I'm wondering if other hikers have felt this, or encountered this, and their reaction. I have decided to not do any Trail Journals for next year's AT hike, too much work & hassle, and I want to experience the hike absent any social media.