THE IDES OF MARCH (2011 EDITION)
Mar. 15th, 2011 10:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
defrogOr, “Why I keep doing this when bloggery is dead.”
Today marks the sixth anniversary of my presence on the LJs (though not this specific blog, which I started in late 2007).
I’m racking my brains trying to think of something clever to say about it. Honestly I’m not coming up with much. One thing I can say is that I’ve learned an important lesson in doing this:
Blogging is a lot like college radio. You do yr show, play yr music and say what’s on yr mind, imagining all the while that yr friends are out there listening and digging it – when in reality most of them don’t even have their radio turned on.
Which is the case with me. Sure, I have 62 followers (which is probably about 5x as many people as used to listen to my radio shows), but most of you are people I’ve met here on LJ. Of all the meatspace friends I’m in contact with, almost none of them read this blog.
This isn’t their fault, of course. I know it’s nothing personal. They have lives, and each life comes with different priorities, some of which are beyond control. Few of them listened to my radio show as well for similar reasons.
Granted, a key difference is that radio is a fixed yet ethereal medium – it goes out into the ether live, at a fixed time, for one broadcast only, never to be heard again unless someone bothers to tape/archive/syndicate it. With blogs, it’s all recorded and time-shiftable – and still most people I know will never see the vast majority of what I post, mainly because they’re not on LJ and never will be. The only way I can reach them is on Facebook – and even there, most of what I post goes unnoticed and/or "unliked" (and that’s due to the fact that I’m competing with a million other posts in their news feed, 80% of them Farmville updates).
Which begs the question: why bother?
The answer – at least for me – is that I do it for the same reason I did college radio: partly for the love of the medium, partly for my own amusement, and partly to keep in practice. And yes, because I'm an opinionated bastard. But I also do it for the few people who do tune in for whatever reason, whether I know them or not.
(I believe the medical term for this is “sheer bloody-mindedness”. I’ll have to check.)
The same applies to comments (or lack thereof). I get very few of them, but it’s really no different from college radio in that respect – hardly anyone ever called in apart from the occasional request, often for songs I had no interest in playing (Skid Row and Warrant were common examples). If anything, the bloggery gets a better response (with the caveat that I don’t have a troll/spam problem, or a lot of psychotic ex-girlfriends/boyfriends/spouses tuning in, as I know other people do).
All of which I mention because I’ve seen other LJers despair from lack of commentary. But for me, it’s like I’m back in the DJ booth broadcasting to the ether. I just assume that yr out there, and yr getting it, even if you don’t phone in.
Which is my meandering way of saying thanks for tuning in, and that broadcasts will continue as normal.
On with the countdown,
This is dF
Today marks the sixth anniversary of my presence on the LJs (though not this specific blog, which I started in late 2007).
I’m racking my brains trying to think of something clever to say about it. Honestly I’m not coming up with much. One thing I can say is that I’ve learned an important lesson in doing this:
Blogging is a lot like college radio. You do yr show, play yr music and say what’s on yr mind, imagining all the while that yr friends are out there listening and digging it – when in reality most of them don’t even have their radio turned on.
Which is the case with me. Sure, I have 62 followers (which is probably about 5x as many people as used to listen to my radio shows), but most of you are people I’ve met here on LJ. Of all the meatspace friends I’m in contact with, almost none of them read this blog.
This isn’t their fault, of course. I know it’s nothing personal. They have lives, and each life comes with different priorities, some of which are beyond control. Few of them listened to my radio show as well for similar reasons.
Granted, a key difference is that radio is a fixed yet ethereal medium – it goes out into the ether live, at a fixed time, for one broadcast only, never to be heard again unless someone bothers to tape/archive/syndicate it. With blogs, it’s all recorded and time-shiftable – and still most people I know will never see the vast majority of what I post, mainly because they’re not on LJ and never will be. The only way I can reach them is on Facebook – and even there, most of what I post goes unnoticed and/or "unliked" (and that’s due to the fact that I’m competing with a million other posts in their news feed, 80% of them Farmville updates).
Which begs the question: why bother?
The answer – at least for me – is that I do it for the same reason I did college radio: partly for the love of the medium, partly for my own amusement, and partly to keep in practice. And yes, because I'm an opinionated bastard. But I also do it for the few people who do tune in for whatever reason, whether I know them or not.
(I believe the medical term for this is “sheer bloody-mindedness”. I’ll have to check.)
The same applies to comments (or lack thereof). I get very few of them, but it’s really no different from college radio in that respect – hardly anyone ever called in apart from the occasional request, often for songs I had no interest in playing (Skid Row and Warrant were common examples). If anything, the bloggery gets a better response (with the caveat that I don’t have a troll/spam problem, or a lot of psychotic ex-girlfriends/boyfriends/spouses tuning in, as I know other people do).
All of which I mention because I’ve seen other LJers despair from lack of commentary. But for me, it’s like I’m back in the DJ booth broadcasting to the ether. I just assume that yr out there, and yr getting it, even if you don’t phone in.
Which is my meandering way of saying thanks for tuning in, and that broadcasts will continue as normal.
On with the countdown,
This is dF
