Yesterday, Crikey ran a short piece by Guy Rundle on blogs. I’m reproducing it with permission, and a response I’ve submitted.
Update: The response is in today’s Crikey email, in the comments, corrections, clarifications and c*ck-ups section. Unfortunately they didn’t link here, but perhaps Comrade Rundle knows how to google.
Elsewhere: John Quiggin wonders whether Rundle is afraid “little magazines” might be displaced by blogs. Tim Dunlop has blog whining fatigue.
17. Is the blog craze almost over and out? 10-4 and roger that…
Guy Rundle writes:
It was 1977 and my friend Todd had saved for six months until he finally had what every 11-year-old wanted – a communications device used by the haulage industry to co-ordinate stock chain delivery management. Yes! A CB radio! Technological advance – better frequency control I think – and deregulation meant everyone had these suckers. We could connect with people miles away and say “10-4″ and ask them where they were headed and say “10-4″, and well, um…
A year after he got it, we would tune in and roam the frequencies. Airy nothingness. I was reminded of this recently while trawling the blogosphere – which is increasingly taken up with blogs that appear to be dead, dying from neglect or stillborn, with one or two initial entries, now years old.
It’s eerie and suggests to me that we are entering the next stage of the online revolution, in which the mass expansion of blogs will begin to contract – especially those which are publishing out towards a putative audience, rather than simply being an online diary.
As with CBs, what thrilled people with blogs was “the ecstasy of communication”, the pure fact of being out there in the wide cyberworld – in other words, the form rather than the content. What stales the experience is what some have thought was its greatest attraction – its networked capacity, which makes everyone producer and consumer, and hence collapses the notion of an audience (since time does not expand, while blog numbers do).
What most realise is that blogging is the illusion of connection, publishing into a void and thus doubly isolating. Those blogs that survive will and are evolv(ing) into multi-person sites, some with collective and decentred ways of uploading, others with hierarchies essentially identical to paper editing.
This repeats the birth of newspapers out of the “pamphlet wars” of the 17th century – the latter a product of the creation of a cheap, single operator platen press. This may be the necessary stage of development required to create a media sphere which genuinely overturns the mass media model – one in which a range of well-edited moderate circulation outlets can charge and get subscriptions. Whether they could turn into full newsgathering organisations remains to be seen.
However, I think the era of commentary done by interlaced single blogs may come to be seen as being as much part of an era as a time when talking to a load of frozen fish barrelling down the Hume seemed like a really neat thing to do.
This is my reply:
I read, and was disappointed by, Guy Rundle’s Crikey piece on blogs, which is a pity, as generally I admire his work.
I think Guy has made a couple of false assumptions which plague the debate.
First, I think the MSM/journos vs. bloggers narrative completely misses the point. Political blogs in Australia do not seek to supplant or supplement journalism in the reporting of news. What they do seek to do is to improve on the immediacy and quality of commentary, and to do so explicitly from partisan and ideological positions. I think Guy would agree that the quality of op/ed commentary in Australia is very poor. We know we do have an impact, because the more prominent political blogs are read by pollies, staffers and strategists, and indeed we often find themes we initiate being picked up by the MSM without attribution.
Secondly, the degree to which the blogosphere is genuinely a public sphere lies in the success of blogs in finding an audience, and in interacting with that audience. The fact that Guy discovered many blogs which are inactive is really beside the point. There are political blogs which never quite take off, and others that fold. But there are also blogs that build an audience and have an impact. I don’t know how many readers Arena has. The blog I founded and coordinate, LP, had 898722 hits and 248056 page views in April. A quarter of our audience is now from the US.
I’d invite Guy to have another look at the Australian blogosphere, and think again.
Rundle seems to have bought the MSM line hook, line and sinker. And the “death of blogs” craze pronounced by the MSM in the American papers a few months ago. Why is he apparently driven by the herd instinct of op/ed columnists? Why do such uninformed and rubbishy pieces on blogging keep getting published? And why do they almost never refer to any actual blogs?
Just questionin…
Kids fool around aimlessly with CBs until they get bored. Others use them in constructive and important ways. They still do. In reality there is/was a vibrant community was out there in CB world, Guy Junior just didn’t know where to look and so only got airy nothingness. Much like blogging.
Bad workman, tools etc.
????
hmm, triumphalist tone is wearisome
1) “ecstasy of communication” makes bloggers sound irrational. I am not a fan of ‘communication’ taken in this categorical sense that renders all communication equivalent. they are not, and to suggest as much is an error. the author does not understand that various media forms intervene in ‘media events’ (from global to local) at different structural levels.
2) “form rather than content” hello? archive of CB radio? Blog as archive? is there not a fundamental difference here? has the author got no idea about new forms of communication and the POWER of Google? get with the picture… publishing/daily rhythm of old media vs speed of new media – speed affects the ability to intervene, and this includes news websites (CNN, BBC, SMH, etc), which in terms of form are *becoming-blog*.
3) “blogging is the illusion of connection, publishing into a void and thus doubly isolating” relations are immanent to the search! see google comment above. information networks are not pre-ordained discursively-reproduced swamps of stagnant ideology, they are fluid and determined by the enthusiasm of the ‘receiver/searcher’ to find the ‘message’ (to lapse into the S-M-R model of communication terminology) and, importantly, the ‘protocol’ built into the search engine.
4) the central error the author makes is to mistake the technical form of blogging for the stupidity of most users. If people live a boring life and create a boring blog, which has no or little useful or interesting content, then no one is going to read it. Who cares about another of the herd of masses bleating about some shit? Maybe they should stop voting in idiot neoliberal governments and reach for something greater in life than paying the bills, being a sports fan and good family person.
how is this person given the opportunity to make an ass of himself? he should stick to writing about what he knows and has reflected upon in an intelligent manner, rather than writing some nonsense.
I can’t recall a single member of the Oz Opeditariat ever saying anything positive about blogging.
Across the political spectrum, there’s a shared view that this a passing fad indulged in by sad, lonely exhibitionists and tinfoil hat wearing obsessives – or so they fervently hope.
Hmmm – it’d take only one opinion editor to clear out the miles of repetitive trash we read in the op/ed pages every day (”what effect does this have on Peter Costello’s leadership chances? Is Beazley finished?”) and hire a few bloggers. UK and US editors have got it. But the narrow media cliques in Oz (Fairfax and News) still have their collective heads stuck in the sand.
Marxists – always with the dialetical inevitabilities.
Don’t bet on it.
Agreed, haven’t read a single commentary in an Australian newspaper giving blogs anywhere near the respect or credit they deserve as one of the most remarkable, and unexpected, new forms of communication.
I have this unshakeable suspicion that many journalists don’t like to give credit to blogs, or bloggers, because they use them so much to save time in their own research and they don’t want people to know this.
I only write that because I’ve lost count of the number of columns I’ve read in the past six months that seem to be directly “inspired” by thoughts and opinions expressed only a day or two before on a host of blogs, be they left, right or in the middle.
I know there will be crossover of opinion on big stories, but I’m talking about non-mainstream, non-today’s news issues. I’ll find some examples.
I’m continually suprised at just how well written a lot of blogs actually are, those that go beyond the first few months and update at least a few times a week.
Rupert Murdoch has talked of a media model where bloggers pretty well replace the majority of journalists, whether they are linked through or paid for their work. Perhaps the future Murdoch news.com will be a mix of wire stories, bloggers pieces and Your Say type opinion pieces from the public. Hey, that’s a bloody good idea! And cheap!
Why pay Ponce Hackerman a few hundred grand for his opinions when you can just reproduce any number of shrill, foaming-at-the-mouth, hate-spraying rants from the commenters at Tim Blair’s blog on your own site for free?
Blogs aren’t going to disappear. They will be folded into the rest of the growing digital media and it will be better for it.
One only has to look to the BBC to see how blogging could possibly be integrated with more mainstream efforts. I am hoping their new direction, announced last month, could lead to a closer integration than the current rather clumsier efforts of the SMH et al. Not that I think they are bad, just that there is much more potential.
Rundle’s is not quite yer standard anti-blog rant, however. It is about trying to draw an historical analogy from the birth of the newspaper. Anyone who has read some Addison and Steele will recognise immediately that the writing is very bloggish.
The question is how the blogosphere might evolve. Already there are key group blogs occupying key niches, pretty much as Rundle suggests.
There are some interesting parallels with the birth of newspapers. Has anyone here read Terry Pratchett’s The Truth?
In that story a writer meets a printing press and a newspaper is born, and soon grows beyond his wildest expectations because of the insatiable appetite of the public for information. Pratchett being a satirist, there’s inevitably a lot of moments which relate to today’s electronic media and how it is initially perceived, dismissed, opposed and then attempted-cooption by the establishment.
It’s an amusing and edifying read.
There are lot more misses than hits in his article.
Rundle’s call about group blogs may well be spot on (who could dispute it it on this blog) and some of the bigger name bloggers (and egos) kickin’ along on their lonesome have been sucked into the MSM.
I think he may just be a little ignorant of the ’sphere, which delivered in the contrarian Crikey style, ends up making him look a goose.
All up, much better than a knee-pad sporting, puff piece.
I’m with Ken, and thought Guy’s contribution rather neat, and think in turn that the ’sphere’s reaction has been unnecessarily and disproportionately defensive. This in particular is a clever run of words, with a conclusion that tends to echo my own guess as to the future direction:
What most realise is that blogging is the illusion of connection, publishing into a void and thus doubly isolating. Those blogs that survive will and are evolv(ing) into multi-person sites, some with collective and decentred ways of uploading, others with hierarchies essentially identical to paper editing.
The reference to 17th century pamphlet wars also struck me as suggestive, particularly the ‘wars’ bit.
Chris, maybe it’s a matter of speaking positions. The degree to which Rundle adopts many of the MSM lines (however varied the nuance – and I think Mark is right to say that the comparison with old media is still there – the 17th century example seems to suggest a parallel trajectory for blogs) and the tone of the piece – loftily surveying a huge phenomenon in a few paragraphs without providing any examples faithfully reproduces the op/ed attitude, backed up by his known prominence as an old media writer.
Well, our ‘fad’ is flourishing.
Complain all you like about the “op-ed attitude”, but where would this and many other blogs be without op-eds? It’s a symbiotic relationship — blogs and newspaper commentary, of mutual loathing and constant borrowings.
If you read my critique, you’ll see that I take issue with his assimilation of blogs to newspapers. And I still do, notwithstanding comments made. Because I don’t think we’re trying to supplant the MSM. We’re not trying to evolve into “newsgathering organisations”. As Ken says, we’re parasites. But we’re lively and creative and political parasites. We’re probably much more like the 17th century pamphleteers. I can think of nothing more boring than a blog that spent all its time trying to “break news”. Guy still hasn’t escaped the terms in which this debate is too often replayed.
Tim Dunlop has blog whining fatigue.
Warning: Liam is about to saddle up upon hobbyhorse. Monomania Alert
One of the things I’m going to argue in my thesis when I eventually finish it is that it’s impossible to have a theory of media divorced from the other non-media institutions that support it.
The Australian ethnic media (my subject), for instance, evolved with very close links to ethnic social clubs, migrant business, sports clubs, Churches and their equivalents, and the State with its vital Government advertising. ‘Foreign’/'ethnic’ press, and later ethnic radio, can’t be understood at all without constant reference to all of the other institutions that surrounded and supported them.
You can’t have an theory of CB radio within capitalism divorced from any theory of how it’s to be used, and Rundle should know better. VHF and UHF scanners are still used as a form of community media by people who have to use them for work, and you can still get them at Dick Smith. That he’s not a professional driver or trawler skipper is his problem. As to blogs, I think that the economics of ‘free’ blogging services like blogger and wordpress.com are vital to understanding the medium, though I admit that I don’t understand that very well myself.
Beyond the hobby blogs and into industry, I’ve seen the future and it looks like Phil Gomes’ Spinopsys.
New technonologies (in the broad sense) tend to be over-hyped and over-sold, and very often placed in narratives of modernity becoming “empowering”, “enabling”, “democratic” etc. But with my own modest blogging efforts, I’ve made some new friends and got to know some very old ones better, and that’s a nice thing.
Mark
“Because I don’t think we’re trying to supplant the MSM. We’re not trying to evolve into “newsgathering organisationsâ€?. As Ken says, we’re parasites. But we’re lively and creative and political parasites.”
I’m not sure you even need to try supplant the MSM, Mark because the damage to MSM is being in by a thousand cuts and not just one stab.
News dissemination is now free and almost totally commoditized. However news gathering isn’t because there has to be foot soldiers on the ground picking up the newsand that costs money. Blogs simply just piggyback off that through a free ride and “opinionate’ and distribution is now virtually free. So you can now get the news local/ international by just using the web and in fact bypassing the media. Think Drudge and a few others.
So MSM is being challenged on the news dissemination front as are its opinion/editorial pages. The web is cutting into the advertising dollars as classifieds are migrating to the web.
What do I think will happen?
For that you need to see what’s doing well/hanging in there and what’s suffering.
Glossy, well put together, good articles, great pics magazines seem to be doing well. I couldn’t imagine say Vanity fair losing out the that much because people like “handling� a mag like Vanity fair. It feels great. However Time and Newsweek are in lots of trouble I would imagine because they perform a fairly basic a service. In other words they aren’t that great. The Economist will do well in any format because it is considered superior in all sort s of ways simply because of the terrific news/analysis it provides, which in lot’s ways is unique as they seem to be able to combine news with opinion in the same piece (quality blogging).
The Wall Street Journal is simply a superior quality newspaper, which in fact has the highest subscription level of any news paper in the world or so it did only up to a few years ago.
The problems.
Whenever a new technology hits the market the businesses that get hit the worst are the ones with shallowest roots or are too reliant on a business model that no longer holds value.
I would say that the New York times, SMH, The Age type papers are in real trouble. They are the ones paying for the cost of news gathering ie sending scribes over to Iraq say while the blogs discuss their correspondent’s findings and pass it around for free. Meanwhile their classifieds are getting battered.
There is no real reason for say Fairfax to have two broadsheets the Australian market when one would suffice. They bear all the admin costs of supporting these papers when most people are no longer just interested in what is happening in the one city. In other words Melbourne news is also news in Sydney. They could run one office and a small number of journos cover local stuff with a metro section. Yes I know they are doing some of that but it isn’t enough as revenues will continue to go down. Do they need to editors for instance?, as that is what I am getting at?
Fairfax will probably survive but not without huge changes.
News, on the other hand has a better handle I think. The Australian is a quality rag with national distribution not relying so much on classifieds. They can charge more for their ads because of the market they focus on.
Where are we heading:
Specialized, quality papers and mags will do fine. Also rans are gonna get the shit kicked out of them. At the moment I would be cutting costs like crazy if I were Fairfax and ditch the SMH and Age for one national paper with metro section for each.
Where will the news come from? Some blogs eventually will be wealthy enough to be sending their own correspondent to Iraq and people like me and Homer etc will be trying to kick the shit out of them from home! You will also be paying for mass news from the wholesale gathering services as well. Ads and special paid subscriber sections will form part of the blogs.
In other words great blogs will be our newspapers. Want to sell a small piece of LP, even though I don’t agree with anything you guys say?!!!
Eventually we will do away with tree cutting altogether and have tablets that we just role out to read.
TV
Don’t get me started.
We will soon be able to watch American ABC and local TV over the Web. In other words every station in thw world will be webcast. Local stations will also die out. In other words content is key. As a viewer I couldn’t give a hoot who is carrying Desperate Housewives as long as I can watch it when I like. Local ads will be carried along with the program.
The overall point is that quality will win out and that means specialization in lots of ways.
Look at it this way. Waht are the costs of running a blog comapred to thos running a newspaper. Zippo, right. So you can make a profit amlmost from the first dollar. That’s pretty copmpelling econmics.
There is a certain class of limousine liberal out there that simply doesn’t trust blogs. I wonder what is motivating them?
I think Rundle’s both right and wrong. The multi-person model’s one that I grasped as the way ahead before blogs had even been coined.
Some of the most interesting people don’t have time to blog full- (or even part-) time. On Line Opinion’s model was for the blogger who was too busy to be a blogger. So I’ve put my money on multi-author blogs being more durable, but that doesn’t mean that the only sort of blog has to be one that endures.
DeanforAmerica served its purpose, for example, and in its place a thousand annuals will bloom. Dead blogs don’t mean that blogging is dying. They could mean that it is evolving, turning over, or pulsating.
Geoff Honnor wrote:
“I can’t recall a single member of the Oz Opeditariat [across the political spectrum] ever saying anything positive about blogging”.
and Steve Edwards echoed:
“There is a certain class of limousine liberal out there that simply doesn’t trust blogs. I wonder what is motivating them?”
Um, just a hunch, but I reckon that one’s blogophobia may exist in direct proportion to one’s taking ABC coin-for-content:
“It will be opinionated, with passionate people thrashing out the cultural debates that we live by, carving up the sacred cows, putting out the fat cats, not believing the hype, and playing doctor with the spin,” says executive producer Guy Rundle.
http://www.abc.net.au/corp/pubs/media/s1444890.htm
Here, I’m not trying to take a cheap shot, re the quick demise of “Vulture”. Rather, if any particular sector of the Australian media is definitely in its death throes right now, it is ABC TV at large.
Never mind the blogs, Guy – the fact that he could take $300k or so (his rumoured cut as EP) from a cash-strapped, rudderless entity, suggests a man now in obvious need of a hapless scapegoat.
I think both Rundle and Mark miss an important point. Mark touches on it when he writes of “the success of blogs in finding an audience, and in interacting with that audience “. Blogs can be of value whether or not they are read. They are, after all, logs. I have a blog (under my real name) in a specialised area and only a handful of people read it and comment. These are my (scholar) colleagues, but it’s not a closed shop. Every now and then an outsider stumbles in and comments. But I would continue it even if no-one read it. In blogging I not only chart my progress in my area of research, but I also mark my territory for future reference (and it automotically references by subject matter, date, etc). Others can plough into it in future also. It’s helpful if I receive comments, but it’s not the only function of a blog.
The shorter Guy Rundle: Look at all those unsold books and rejected manuscripts. This marks The End of Reading …
I’m not so sure about the dire fate of mono-blogs (at least of the non-politcal ilk). I am enjoying them more than ever as other places consolidate.
Wot Boynton said.
Before blogs ate my life there was eBay. I used to make things and sell them there. The things I made were kind of weird and definitely an acquired taste. I could not have made it pay at a craft market, but on the internet you can be as obscure and hyperspecialised as you like. The people who are meant to find you will find you.
How cool is this blogging business? Man, I get to find out the thoughts from a community of people literally on the other side of the planet, who live in a gigantic country I’ve never been to, that I can only partly understand! Plus, they’re charming and interesting and weird, and every so often, they say something back to me! This rocks! There’s a million interesting ways in which this is a constructive medium, and it’s only in its beginnings…
Who knows what benefits this style of communication will bring to people across the world in, say, 50 or 60 years? Y’all have started something important and good.
Rock on, LP, as the great universe rocks on!
Laura: “…the things I made were kind of weird and definitely an acquired taste…”
Well, now I think we need to know much more about them, then! You’ve got *me* curious, at least…
Mark, solid comment to Crikey.
MSM doesn’t yet know what to make of bloggers or even a rather more professional incarnation of them as found in Crikey.
Interestingly, Crikey was locked out of the budget lock-up because they were not considered – in Crikeys’ own words – not to be ‘mainstream media.’
Thanks for the kind words Liam, pimping suits you.
It’s all about niches, this something that Rundle and the MSM does not understand. Laura is spot on with her observation:
This is something they have yet to wrap their heads around, the long tail. Google get’s it with it’s contextual advertising, lots of little sites returning and earning pennies a day whch adds up to billions of dollars in income and a whole new business.
Google and other businesses that recognise this may end up being the biggest little media companies in the world.
They exist in a world where validation comes with mass audiences and big book/magazine sales. Their world is dying and is slowly being supplanted with a kind of hyper specialisation in topicality.
Either way, I sent this post by Billmon to Crikey to add to Blogwatch as a response to Rundle, however, it appears they didn’t do a Blogwatch today because they were probably too busy being hurt about being on the outside looking in and trying too hard to become like all the other big media tossers.
The last photo in the post is Rundle being eaten by a furry blogging mammal. I’d suggest Crikey is not too far behind………..
Crikey lives on a diet of conflict.
Guy Rundle wrote some opinions. Mark Banisch responded with his own opinions. Crikey thrives in part by editing an interesting interplay of contrasting opinions. Cooperative bloggs have a tendency (by their very cooperative nature) to bend towards monocultures. To me, this is the great weakness of many Bloggs: Predictability. Crikey – in an older more confrontational incarnation – used to refer to it’s “Las Vegas devision: We’ll host your fight”. It has a hard core of readers and contributers who like ‘robust debate’. Guy Rundle’s piece gave Mark an opportunity, which he efficiently and effectivley grasped. Live long a propser, but don’t take it all to seriously.
okay bloggers here’s a test for the usefulness or otherwise of LP as a widely prescribed blogsite. Like many others I suspect, I find the letters page of the major dailies the most interesting and potentially the most blog-like of what may be becoming a dinosaur industry. Recently I queried why the North Korean ship ‘Pong Sar’ was being scuttled by (from newspaper references)the AFP through the RAAF (target practice) off the NSW coast. Okay it had been apprehended a couple of years previous when a few crew were caught trying to run heroin ashore, but the ship’s hierarchy – captain, mate etc – were acquitted of involvement in similar offences, so they couldn’t be held responsible for the proceeds of crime presumably and they were the ‘masters’ of the ship, ie the owner’s reps. The ship had been laid up in Sydney Harbour for a couple of years so had accumulated a bit of unpaid rent but even a sale would have helped meet that. It wasn’t a particularly old ship. So why was it sunk? I have no answers and the major daily wasn’t interested. Was it so obvious? Am I being conspiratorial, un-Australian even asking. Has Mick Kelty taken over?
Thanks, weez. If I’d had more time to reflect, I probably would have written a more reflective piece. But it’s kinda in the spirit of blogging, and Crikey, as frogmouth notes, to shoot from the hip instantly.
Thanks, j_p_z. Right back atcha, as we say on this continent of ours!
All of those dead blogs probably are an indication that lots of people get initially fascinated with the idea of blogging, but rapidly tire of the reality. Blogs share that quality – of an immediate seductiveness that doesn’t necessarily live up to the hype – with hundreds of other things. The exercise equipment gathering dust in the shed was once the great hope for health and happiness. Saxophones left in their cases until the reeds perish, garden beds which go to seed, goldfish starved to death, etc. An idea doesn’t have to be universally embraced, though, to be useful to at least some people. Blogs don’t have to change the world in order to be interesting and enjoyable. It’s my view that they will probably have more of an impact than CB radios ever have, but I’d be surprised if that many bloggers are really motivated by the sense that they’re involved in some grand project. For most of us, I think it’s just a hobby that we happen to enjoy and get something out of. If it goes on to change the world, that will just be a bonus.
Blogs don’t need to compete with the MSM in order to be worthwhile. Newspapers don’t need to compare themselves with magazines, which don’t need to compare themselves with books, etc. A blog is a thing in its own right, existing for its own reasons, and fulfilling its own functions for readers and writers. Maybe one day they will be supplanted by some technology that does the same job better, but until then they succeed or fail on their own terms. Why spoil the fun by imagining ourselves to be a movement?
What Liam and Geoff said. You get the feeling that those who criticise blogs haven’t actually read many for very long.
How cool is this blogging business? Man, I get to find out the thoughts from a community of people literally on the other side of the planet, who live in a gigantic country I’ve never been to, that I can only partly understand! Plus, they’re charming and interesting and weird, and every so often, they say something back to me! This rocks! There’s a million interesting ways in which this is a constructive medium, and it’s only in its beginnings…
That’s something people like Rundle miss, and it’s because they’re obsessively focussed on the “newsgathering” or “journalist” meme.
Blogs are fun, and they involve communication with others unlike us.
That’s a big part of their appeal.
Sitting in an armchair reading Arena is worthy, but a different activity altogether. (And in case the Rundles of this world choose to interpret this as “blogs are shallow” – well, the niche thing means you can choose TSSH or Crooked Timber / Juan Cole / Michael Berube, it’s up to you.)
Re the dead blogs — great comment of Dan’s. Things don’t have to last forever in order to serve their purpose, nor is death a guarantee of lack of quality, or all funerals would be by definition shams.
I am reminded of what Margaret Mead once said to a young male journalist who had the impertinence to ask her about her three “failed” marriages. ‘Young man,’ she said, ‘they didn’t fail; they finished.’
Does Andrew Bolt count?
What Helen said. I’ve made more friends through blogging than I would have believed possible.
And as a feminist I’ve also found it wonderful for connecting with people with the same views as myself, or with people who can inform my view as a feminist.
Despite the rhetoric, many of us feminists aren’t hanging out in cabals, boiling frogs legs and what have you: before I started blogging feminism was my dirty little secret, and one I rarely discussed with my RL friends and acquaintances. Yet when I found blogging, all of a sudden I found I wasn’t an anachronicstic hangover from 1972 — that other women didn’t all see themselves as “I’m not a feminist buts…” and that there was a vibrant world of feminist thought out there. Challenging and provocative and maddening and enticing.
Dan and Pavlov’s Cat:
Dead blogs may not be dead at all but merely dormant because of things as mundane as changes in career or lifestyle, problems with ISP, etc., simply being too busy and so forth. In some cases it may be that the blog is dead because the blogger is dead.
… all of a sudden I found I wasn’t an anachronicstic hangover from 1972 …
Kate, you say that like it’s a bad thing.
Sometimes I feel like I have an anachronistic hangover from 1992 or so. That’s one awful thing about ageing – worse hangovers!