I want the blogs back
Years ago I followed blogs of friends and subculture "icons"(they hate when I refer to them like this, but it was true thattime) and around 2009-2010 most of them went silent. Some even usedservices that are dead as doornail1 nowadays and disappearedwithout a trace; others though still update once in a blue moon.
Until very recently I was not aware that a few restarted blogging onTumblr a while ago, so when I found them, I started following them. Ittook only a few days for me to feel like this:
Let me explain.
You're allindividuals! Yes! We're all individuals!2
There are countless articles on how our attention span is becomingshorter and shorter, how today's children are suffering fromhyperactivity and that we constantly require new stimulus minute byminute - but just a fraction of them are trying to figure out why.
One of these reasons could be microblogging and the way microblog is(not) structured. Content is usually coming from countless followedpeople, in your face, in one big mass, within a short time you end upwith monstrous amount of pictures, quotes, reshares, things. If I wasnot looking at the URL I would not have been able to guess whosetumblr/twitter/whatever entry I was looking at - and this is bad.
We're loosing our uniqueness!It does not matter if youreshare tonnes of things you're interested in, it's not you, becauseyou're not adding yourself to it.
Years ago we sat down and constructed our "blogs". We gave them apart of ourselves, to make it a reflection of ourselves, in our ownstyle, our own language. It took time and it took effort.
If I look at my wall, my timeline, or any other stream, it's a messwhich I'm not proud of. It's a never-ending scroll of things, withoutstructure, without separating the less important from the moreimportant, without me, without focus."regaining focus" is becomingmuch of a buzzterm but there is truth behind it.
A picture can worth a 1000 words, but it does not necessarilyreplaces words, especially if the picture was not taken by you. Usuallythere are fascinating stories behind good photographs, long anecdotesbehind a piece of art and these all give an additional layer tothem.
There is a book, Light on the Earth: Two Decades of Winning Images ofWildlife Photographer of the Year3 where next to everyphoto there is a short story how it was made. It gives people and ideahow patient ( or how lucky ) one had to be to see the even happen andtake those pictures. When an biographical work is written on someonetheir works is surrounded with narratives, interviews, memoirs and theyall add to the art itself.
There was a talk about and idea, momentum.im, and in that talk therewere serious and important questions asked: are the things you share onthe social networks the moments you want to keep? Are those the memoriesyou're actually fond of? Do they represent you?
I believe most of us would answer no. I'm not sharing my mostimportant moments, because those are not for the general public. Thethings I share are the ones I would like others to hear about, but theydo not describe me. And therefore: status updates are not reallyimportant things at all.
Tweeting time comes out of dead time, usually - time in taxis, orwaiting in corridors. Blogging time usually comes out of sleeping time.- Neil Gaiman4
It's hard to argue with those two sentences, yet Neil Gaiman wasabout to abandon social media for half a year5.
We have so much dead time, right? Waiting at thetake-away/restaurant, commuting in the morning and the evening, walkingon the street and we're not doing anything, right? Well... How abouttalking to the take-away guy? They are usually friendly, they couldoffer you some specials, at least a smile.Or a cup of tea after awhile, if they are Turkish. Turkish tea is good. Commuting? Readnews, read books, read science - make it worth, make yourself up-to-dateand interesting. Walking on the street? WATCH OUT FOR THE TRUCKS, notfor Facebook updates.
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, butwhen there is nothing left to take away. - Antoine de Saint-Exupery6
Ever since Apple redefined design( yes, I do give them creditfor this ) everyone is trying to live up to the idea, leading tothings like Twitter. 140 characters should "embrace" your creativity bylimiting you. Or Instagram: limit you to square, the hardest compositionof all.
Sometimes it does help. Sometimes "640kB should be enough". Sometimesnot. Creativity will not become stronger with restrictions and youshould never believe this. Use whatever you want to use, whatever theway of expressing yourself requires; you don't need restrictions tocreate. It could help you train, it could be useful as an excersize andit will probably help you focus, but it will not bring instantcreativity.
Probably this is another reason why posting short statuses, singlepictures, resharing and reposting became this popular. We're trying tobe minimal, but minimalism is extremely hard, and if not done well, it'sjust "meh" - something to forgot in a minute.
attentionwhoresthirstiness
A long time ago I started cross-posting from my blog to everywhere Icould. I revisited this experiment from time to time, with Facebook,Twitter, Tumblr, WordPress.com, Flickr, Deviantart, etc., and all forone goal: fame.
It's hard to admit and hard to make myself admit that yes, in somecases, I was posting for attention. I wanted my photos to gain success,to be seen by many, like it happened to others.
Then lately I started asking a question: do I want my post to be seenby thousands and be forgotten in minutes or seen by a few, butremembered for a long time?
This is a very important question and it made me think about the oldweb, the internet that was homely. I was so happy with less than 10views per day! I received comments in my guestbook and mails aboutbanner-exchange.
If I enjoyed those times I value the few, but important visits andviews to the many, faceless, momentary pageloads.
for the end
Where is the wonder, where's the awe? Where's dear Alice knocking onthe door? Where's the trapdoor that takes me there? Where the real isshattered by a Mad Marsh Hare
Where is the wonder, where's the awe? Where are the sleepless nightsI used to live for? Before the years take me I wish to see the lost inme
I want my tears back! I want my tears back now! Nightwish: I Want MyTears Back7
UPDATE (2014-08-21 09:44): Not so surprisingly, even themain(er)stream media8 had started to think about revivingblogs, thanks to their journalists9.
http://www.bbcshop.com/science+nature/light-on-the-earth/invt/9780563522607↩︎
http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2014/05/important-please-read-this-now.html↩︎
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/jun/14/neil-gaiman-social-media-sabbatical↩︎
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Antoine_de_Saint_Exup%C3%A9ry↩︎
http://grooveshark.com/s/I+Want+My+Tears+Back/4kLW1q?src=5↩︎
http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/20/6049259/the-future-of-blogging↩︎
(Oh, by the way: this entry was written by Peter Molnar, and originally posted on petermolnar dot net.)
⋅CC-BY-4.0 ⋅Peter Molnar(mail@petermolnar.net) ⋅https://petermolnar.net/journal/i-want-the-blogs-back/
This post elsewhere on the web: archive.org
internet
