I was listening to a discussion on the Guardian Technology podcast yesterday. It was claimed that people are stopping blogging because a blog post takes so much effort from which the blogger obtains so little reward.
Well, I've always found the act of writing on here an enjoyable piece of piss. It doesn't take much effort to type the crap that comes into your head which is what true blogging is all about. If you want to pore over something with a furrowed brow then you should be writing a book, not a blog.
As for the "little reward", what do you expect? It's free to publish, it's free to read. The reward should be in the heads and faces of your readers. The knowing nods, the wry grins, the explosive laughter, the tears of empathy. And then the comments that communicate these emotions across the miles.
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The Staircase in the Woods by Chuck Wendig
2 days ago
Good post, Geoff.
ReplyDeleteHaving said that, I hear that old cliche "(blogging/twitting/etc) is what you make of it". As I'm not that well educated, I have to pour over every word to make sure any posts I crap out onto Blogger have a touch of substance. It's an exercise in vanity writing.
Still enjoy it though.
I think your generalisations about blogging and bloggers are just as mistaken as theirs.
ReplyDeletePour/pore/poor?!?
ReplyDeleteCan someone install a spellcheck widget for the comments section please?
Right, back to the novel writing...
In the attention economy, you do things for attention. People who write for money have no conception of that.
ReplyDeleteI think of Blogging as a Battenburg Cake, which I love.
ReplyDeleteThe best bit is the Marzipan, which is the comments, and that makes it all worthwhile.
However Twitter has tried to become just the Marzipan and as such can give you indigestion. And it's all a bit too yellow.
Istvanski - It's got to be enjoyable and not seem like work which is something you should expect payment for.
ReplyDeleteMr London Street - Except my generalisations are not meant to be taken seriously.
Bob - Exactly.
Rog - But some very entertaining bloggers get few or no comments. On Twitter it is easier to interact with a larger circle of people and feel more part of the action. I've never been able to watch The Simpsons because of all that bloody yellow.
I love blogging as it's like having a living room full of witty guests only I don't have to clean up later.
ReplyDeleteI'm with you Geoff... and MJ.
ReplyDeleteI also feel huge empathy with you regarding The Simpsons - you nicked my line [True].
Sx
MJ - It's so much more comfortable than real-life socialising.
ReplyDeleteScarlet - We once painted our walls yellow. We painted over them with a less sickly colour the next day.
Great post Geoff!!
ReplyDeleteHope this comment communicates empathy and emotion across the miles.
I think the value of blogging is interacting with interesting people from all over the world that I would otherwise never have met.
ReplyDeleteOh Hai MJ, Miss Scarlet, Kaz!
Marzipan alert.
ReplyDeleteI wonder how many miles it is from here to you . . .
ReplyDeleteAnd I can't watch the Simpsons because of the colour (and the head shapes) either, however you can get mazipan in a pale cream sort of shade that means you can eat it with your eyes open.
Kaz - Yes, I can feel it from here.
ReplyDeletexl - That is so.
Vicus - I'll do you a special simnel cake post for Easter.
Ziggi - It's a more attractive journey to here online than by road. I have seen non-yellow marzipan. I think it's the real stuff.
Blogging is me typing some rubbish that's in my head and seeing where it goes.
ReplyDeleteThe comments are what I like.
We should do an experiment and type the rubbish that's in each others heads. Telepathic bloggers!
ReplyDeleteI like words and don't get the opportunity to use convoluted language at work for fear of the perennial "oh Mr VeryVeryBored you use such long words, I had to get a dictionary" response. I think that is why I blog. That, and the fact that I am crap at football.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the Simnel cake reminder. Never too soon to start pulverising blanched almonds.
ReplyDeleteSee - blogging is very useful.
Mr VVB - I work in a place where lots of different words are written. But I don't write any of them.
ReplyDeleteArabella - You're welcome. But what you do to those almonds is cruel, so cruel.
I do think a lot of professional writers do get pissed off with bloggers, because now we can all write, a lot of us don't bother to read their crap anymore.
ReplyDeleteIt's a bit like having fifty TV channels - you can only watch so much of it. We can only read so many words so I just don't buy papers anymore.
Why pay to read a crappy columnist when you can read something entertaining for free?
ReplyDeleteWell, after paying your internet provider of course.
I don't watch The Simpsons any more, not since they ceased to be funny (about episode 213).
ReplyDeleteNewspapers in particular are twitchy about blogging. Now that the Press can't keep up with breaking news, boring, opinionated crap is what they (or at least the serious papers) rely on. We're tramping all over their territory.
Ah but that boring, opinionated crap is so very edgy, isn't it?
ReplyDeleteWe've all noticed that all the Newsies have a "blog" now..that just republishes their column..industrial blogging.
ReplyDeleteThis is the power of globalisation. The truth is that there are hundreds of millions of interesting writers in every corner of the world. All of our supposedly elite writers are terrified that they aren't so special.
My throaway spur of the moment posts always had better responses than the gilgameshian epics that I painstakingly researched...that drove me f*cking crazy...which is why I gave up and now I am begging for attention in the slums of Facebook
;)