This is Not A Blog

A lot has changed in what is now called the blogosphere since I started "blogging" five years ago or so. The bloom is off the rose in many respects. While there are zillions more blogs, the buzz has moved on to newer activities (posting and networking on MySpace and Facebook, videos on YouTube, photos on Flickr etc.) In the political blogosphere, a lot of individual blogs are folding, and even the middle sized community blogs are having trouble surviving. It seems to be true for blogs specializing in other subject areas for a global audience: the big blogs get bigger, while the small ones fade away. Those who made their names with their own blogs are joining with others in group or community blogs, so that together they can reliably attract a sufficient audience, and maintain or enhance their influence: their buzz. (The big blog is also the only one that attracts enough advertising so you can, you know, get paid.)

The success of individual blogs is increasingly measured by numbers of "hits" and readers, and by the number of "comments," and the energy of the dialogue in the comments to each post. That became very evident to me with a local blog called The Buhne Tribune. It was comprised of fairly short posts with lots of visuals, witty in a way that became characteristic, almost always on local topics. The comments became the locus for--let's say "intense"--discussion, often about local media, particularly the newspapers. That seems to be largely because many of the people making the comments worked for one or another of these newspapers.

For awhile, the Buhne Tribune was the one "must read" of the local blogosphere. The person who created it was known only as "Captain Buhne," and there was much speculation on his identity, expressed on his blog and elsewhere. Eventually his name became known. Shortly afterwards, apparently in the face of declining comments, he closed his blog, saying it had no function anymore, now that his identity was known.

I always knew that most of my blogs are local only in that I live here (on the North Coast of CA) and occasionally write about it. But other aspects of the Buhne Tribune situation were sort of revealing to me. That the interest was so dependent on the gimmick of the blogger's real identity was mystifying. (While I keep this Captain Future persona, I don't hide my non-screen name.) But I was especially stunned by the violence and viciousness of the comments there. Each thread was a separate snakepit. And it was a kind of community, in that the commenters seemed to know the other commenters, although they seemed to mostly insult each other.

On selected community blogs I like to engage commenters to my posts, and to comment on others'. But comments on a lot of blogs are the same polarized arguments from the same easily identifiable ideologies. For me, it's mostly a waste of time and energy, and I learn little except what each subgroup's position is. And I'm certainly not interested in engaging in petty warfare, and especially not in providing the battlefield.

So while I understand that comments reflect the number and engagement of readers, and I wish my posts on my blogs got more, if it means hosting prefab arguments and general nastiness, I guess I'm happier without the hassle.

Which is probably further evidence that this is not really a blog. My basic reason for blogging has not changed from five years ago, as I expressed it in a North Coast Journal story: "Once I got past the name ("blog" sounded like something you might need medicine for) I saw immediately that the web log format would allow me to do what hadn't been possible before: To publish on the Internet easily, without limit and for free."

As I got familiar with the evolving tools available to me, I also got hooked on using the links, photos, tags and other elements to create a visual as well as verbal equivalent to making up my own little newspaper, as I used to do in grade school. And I do mean hooked, because the pleasure of doing it was the reward, not very often the response.

This blog and its predecessors and cousins did get me in touch with old school friends and distant relatives. But in blog terms, my most successful is Soul of Star Trek, which got me readers within the Star Trek and sci-fi communities (including a few stars of Star Trek series') and seems to be leading to a larger audience through a Trek community blog. But even this blog gets few readers in Internet terms.

In fact, it's clear from links to my blogs that most of their readers are not blog readers per se, the people who check in every day or so for whatever you've posted recently, but people doing searches on particular subjects. Again, though I'd love to have scads more regular readers--and I still write for that mythical reader--I've come to terms with reality. The truth is there are few blogs that I read regularly. They are either on topics that don't interest me that much, or reference items on the Internet that I've already seen with commentary that doesn't reveal anything new to me. So how can I blame others who feel the same way about my blogs?

And even when I don't quite understand why a particular blog doesn't seem to have the audience I'm writing it for, in the end I don't have to understand it to recognize it. Again, there's a certain freedom in this, in that I'm doing it for my own pleasure and satisfaction, and perhaps also for those individuals from everywhere in the world who are looking for something specific that I can offer them. The comments I get from such searchers who stick around to read more are among the most gratifying, though they are few.

I've had the chance to practice my fantasy by being an editor and an on-deadline writer for newspapers, but the control and the opportunities for experiment and plain old playfulness that the blogs provide remain way too seductive. I hope I don't wake up one day and realize I've got nothing to show for my life than time lost in cyberspace that should have gone into writing books or something. Though in fact I have that thought about every other day.

Still, I feel a responsibility to my few and/or non-existent regular readers to say that I may show up relatively often as I have in the past, or not. I sense the futility of trying to be Climate Crisis Central on this blog, though I don't know of another blog that treats the topic or the more general theme of the future quite the way I do. Nor have I found a better blog on topics of some of my other blogs. But it is what it is. Some days (or let's face it, nights) I'm going to waste time doing this anyway, because I feel the need to, or for the fun of it, to cheer myself up, or to tell the world the truth no one else will tell you! And other nights (and days) I will listen to my more responsible voices and work on something else.

But even then I suppose I'll blog about it.