96 down to 19. What am I talking about? Age? Waist size? Ha-ha, no, no. Rather, that's just how many sites I had in my blogroll that are no longer updated or have been deleted. Of the nearly 100 blogs that piqued my curiosity somewhere along the way in the last 7-8 years, 19 is all that's left*! Blogging has certainly lost its fad factor over the years, hasn't it? In fact, this recent spring clean was reinforced by a post Jackie made on her Home blog. She and her readers brought up valid concerns about the nature of blogging: why people come and go; how to maintain privacy yet be authentic, etc. All this had me pondering my own thoughts on this curious craft...
Ironically enough, when blogging was most misunderstood and misjudged, that's when it was most engaged, most popular! Now, the platform's become almost blase with seemingly everyone having blogged at one point or another. Portions of it, true, can be terribly designed with hard-to-read formatting, huge images requiring tons of scrolling, bright garish colours, flashing animations and so forth. No wonder it leaves a bad taste for some.
Just the other day, I heard some young chaps discussing blogging with one noting that while they enjoy writing, they haven't blogged as they don't have anything important, or more so, unique to say. That's also a good point. Certainly there is nothing new under the sun, yet we humans keep writing books, journals, magazine articles, you name it. Not only that, we now go so far as to maintain something even more intrusive — personal Facebook accounts! Add to that, we often "friend" people we barely know just to keep in touch. We are reduced to simply "liking" posts that may share something even tragic in order to show our support. Unlike what blogging affords, there's no art to the message, no crafting the words or choosing that perfect photo to add to your online presence. No, it's rather become a sort of haphazard, immediate way to let the world know where you are and what you're doing on any given day. That's fine, I'm not invested either way.
What a bizarre dichotomy though that now we readily embrace a platform that engages most in ways that increasingly raise those same concerns about privacy, mediocrity, authenticity and so forth! While sometimes I too am tempted to catch up with relatives, old friends, even co-workers and the like, I have refrained from having my own personal Facebook account. It seems to me from the frequent comments I hear from its users that it's often filled with drama, people getting hurt unnecessarily and a network used by some to unfortunately snoop and gossip. It's gone beyond the pale of its useful social experiment. That's one trouble with technology.
So, no thank you, I will stick to blogging! Here's an avenue for writing something beyond just a tertiary snippet; a place to explain one's wonder and aesthetic; to connect with other artists and writers one might never have the privilege of knowing otherwise. If you "thumbs up" a post or not isn't my main concern but whenever you do happen to leave a comment, wonderful! Truly. I love getting to know people and what makes them interpret something as they do, thus in part why I host Creative Tuesdays.
All this to say that I'm not abandoning the blogging ship! Yes, admittedly too, there are very few of us men out here in the blogosphere, at least those who aren't discussing sports, geek stuff, political/social activism or what have you. Well then, if nothing else, perhaps that makes my voice at least a tad more, dare I say... novel? :)
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* My blogroll, btw, has now increased to 23, finding that some have re-taken to Blogger. Perhaps there's been a mini resurgence of sorts for creative souls out there? One can certainly hope!
