Dot in the Sky (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dotinthesky) wrote2013-05-07 07:51 pm
dotinthesky) wrote2013-05-07 07:51 pm
Entry tags:
Death of Blogging
I've been thinking today if blogging and livejournaling is dead. Dead in the sense that most people who used them before have gone on to acquire many more social networks, and because of the increase in their personal admin (checking Facebook, checking Twitter, checking Instagram, etc) they no longer can tolerate long pieces of writing.
Twitter, to me, seems of the time. Tiny digestible nuggets that can lead you to longer articles if you so desire, but there's no pressure to read - you can easily just move/scroll on. Before, with blogs and livejournals, there was the online social pressure to at least skim read. Make some noise that you were paying attention. Now, they lie unread, uncommented, unnoticed. Or saved for "later" reading.
The age of people keeping blogs to document their lives as policemen / ambulance drivers / sex workers is also dead. Again, I think personal admin has got in the way and that type of cultural product is resigned to the noughties much like a lot of reality shows.
For myself, I sat in an old cemetery for lunch today and read some Walt Whitman. I now know that Livejournal will never be the same, but I'm Ok with continuing to write here, for myself and for the few that still read this. I've also started writing letters to friends who refuse to use social networks, and on Monday mornings I find a cafe before work and do a bit of fiction writing.
Twitter, to me, seems of the time. Tiny digestible nuggets that can lead you to longer articles if you so desire, but there's no pressure to read - you can easily just move/scroll on. Before, with blogs and livejournals, there was the online social pressure to at least skim read. Make some noise that you were paying attention. Now, they lie unread, uncommented, unnoticed. Or saved for "later" reading.
The age of people keeping blogs to document their lives as policemen / ambulance drivers / sex workers is also dead. Again, I think personal admin has got in the way and that type of cultural product is resigned to the noughties much like a lot of reality shows.
For myself, I sat in an old cemetery for lunch today and read some Walt Whitman. I now know that Livejournal will never be the same, but I'm Ok with continuing to write here, for myself and for the few that still read this. I've also started writing letters to friends who refuse to use social networks, and on Monday mornings I find a cafe before work and do a bit of fiction writing.
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I think the LJ model is dead because the majority of people prefer the quick gratification of posting something super short and getting a "like" or a "retweet". That has instant gratification. It's much easier to miss things on twitter or facebook so an important life event announced on those is likely to just go past. Twitter has more density of information... a lot of LJ entries are a few points and a lot of waffle. Twitter, or at least the people I follow, tend to be making a point or a joke or linking to something with every sentence. So it's easy to read LJ as "Blah blah blah" because the signal is so much less amongst the noise.
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But could it be that you are an example apart? And that your blog reading increased in accordance with a decrease in LJ posts from others...? I just remember all those people who had LJs or Blogspots for very weak reasons (and did little posting of any worth) - they now seem perfectly content with Facebook.
Your second paragraph is spot on.
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I think fewer people have a "hello I'm Dave" blog... but instead people have blogs pointed at a special purpose attracting only readers for that purpose.
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