After spending many years reading (and repeatedly trying to write) blogs, a few years ago I seem to have forgotten about them. In their heyday (for me) I would write in my blogs, follow others blogs, look for interesting new blogs, even read some LiveJournals!
Now? Not so much.
I suspect that, like maps, phone books, computers, cameras, books, etc, blogs disappeared into the mists that lay below the smartphones that we now spend all of our time on (like just this moment).
One of the side effects of that is a lack of depth. When I read blogs, I appreciated people who wrote a lot and often. I would find a blog and dig in, read all the way down, then, maybe, bookmark it and never read it again, or check in once in a while.
Now though, through twitter, and Tumblr, and Instagram and etc etc, we follow along many more people’s lives and thoughts, much more reliably and frequently, but with vastly less depth.
Is it better? Worse? I don’t know.
True, for most of us there was the conundrum of spending, literally, hours writing lengthy blog posts with insights, opinions, side stories, pictures, digressions… and then seeing no sign that anyone other than ourselves ever read it.
Now you spend a matter of seconds writing some single angle tweet or a catchy picture, and can receive dozens of shares, likes, whatever. It’s much more recognition for much less work. And then, in almost all cases, it’s gone. After a few days, at most, most of that content is never to be viewed/read by anyone ever again. It’s all so in the moment. Which leads things to be a bit contrived, generated for a quick bite, to get as many of the strangers (and some friends) that follow you to give you a quick press of the like button to justify the merits of your post. However, sometimes that’s just what’s needed… Not all content needs to be hemmed and hawed over, but it seems like the pendulum has moved two far into the “brief and short-lived” direction.
I admit that when I blogged, I would occasionally go back and re-read my posts. Maybe it’s self-serving to post things that maybe no one else will read or to scribe something and put it out there to be read, or not read, for years. But what is it to plop out little thoughts for masses to glance at for a second and then vanish into the past?
Leave a Reply