PhotoDude.com

Sat. Jul 16, 2005

Five Years

Though I’ve been “on the web” since early ‘96, it was five years ago today that I first posted something on this web site via this little application called “Blogger” (notably, the first link I made is now dead, but I’m still here, and so is Blogger).

Five years is a fairly long time in Real Life, but on the Internet, it’s an eternity. Or a significant percentage of one. Because I wasn’t a part of the First Wave of blogs, many hundreds had preceded me. I was, at best, a Second Waver, a web geek drawn in at first by the application, Blogger, but soon absorbed in the process, blogging.

The explosion in weblogs since then has been amazing to watch. It hasn’t all been good. There are many who are still far too dismissive of blogs. But there’s at least an equal number (and likely more) who take blogging far far too seriously.

A bit contradictory, eh? Here I am “celebrating” five years of blogging, while simultaneously dissing it. I suppose it’s been true of most new mediums over the ages; they inspire great new things, and disturbing excesses.

I’ve watched (and even helped) a lot of people start a weblog. Over the years, I’ve evolved, and so have they. And in my opinion, more than a few have evolved into blog-egos of disturbingly significant proportions. Or alternately, I’ve devolved into a complete cynic.

No need to name names, we’ll assume it’s a shovelful of the latter inspired by a heaping spoonful of the former. But there is no doubt a sense of growing “self importance” among many bloggers. Some of it is well deserved, much of it is teenish hype.

And I believe a lot of it is “growing pains.” Let’s face it, the medium itself is only recently out of infancy. And the growth of the number of blogs has been “time proportional,” meaning that out of the current 13.4 million blogs Technorati is tracking, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of them are weeks old. Months old. Maybe a year. Relative infants.

And I see an awful lot of adolescence out there.

I know, I sound like a cynical bitter old curmudgeon. That just means your ears are working fine. “Dang pierced whippersnappers don’t know a dang thing about blogging.” Others might suggest maybe it’s jealousy over not being an “A-List” blogger after all these years, or not being named Time magazine’s blog of the year, or some other fame-related reason.

I chuckle. I’ve had a small chunk of localized fame, long before the days of the Internet, and trust me, fame is a highly overrated commodity. I’ve had plenty for this lifetime, thank you very much. When I first launched this domain in January of 1997, I was thrilled to see daily traffic break into double digits. I literally remember the day I saw that a dozen people had visited my web site the day before, and the genuine thrill that generated. That was dozen people who’d read my words or seen my pictures … whom I’d never laid eyes on. Who lived in places I’d never visited.

Maybe part of it is because I do hold on to that root amazement I got eight years or so ago when I saw someone had visited my site … from Russia. Here I was with a 100 mhz Pentium running Windows and a bunch of English software, and there they were, running Lenin-knows what operating system, on a computer of unknown origins, on the other side of the world.

Our only commonality and connection was the HTML document that I’d been able to write, and they’d somehow been able to read.

I still hold on to that wonder, that foundation. I still write to one person, you. Not a hopefully ever growing “audience.” Since that day a dozen showed up, it’s all been gravy to me.

Oh, sure, like any blogger, I’m well aware of how many people visit my site. But since the realization of that “first dozen,” I’ve always had to reduce it, even from that low number. I can’t write to 12 people. It comes from my background in radio. You never get behind the mike and speak to hundreds of people. You communicate to one person. In reality, it’s always down to that level, one person hearing (or reading) your words. It only becomes an “audience” in your head, and that’s also where the resultant distortion occurs.

The reason blogging sucked me in like a Force Five hurricane is that I immediately latched on to it as a clear continuation of what I’d already been doing on the web for years. Combining observational writing and pictures to tell a story, about an event, or about a place.

Blogging is a tremendous medium for self expression. The problem is often what follows … the reaction to your self expression. Or maybe even the desire for a reaction. The self expression itself ought to be satisfaction enough, but often that internal validation is either not enough, or not what was sought in the first place. This is why we sometimes see people nearly desperately trolling for traffic.

Other times, the traffic comes. And comes. “Hey, you like me, you really like me!” Sometimes, that reaction to your self-expression shapes and influences future expression. You’ve got to “top” yourself, and keep that traffic river flowing. It becomes your validation. It creates a disturbing self-importance, a certain “self-esteem via audience” that we usually only see in Hollywood and on TV reality shows.

Now we soak in it.

Again, I think it comes down to motivation. Because the numbers are stark. 13.4 million blogs. The numbers make me think of the music business. Many get into it because they want to be the next U2 or Snoop Dog or whatever. The reality is that 0.01% make it to that level, so you’d better be doing it for a love of the music.

But of the most recent million blogs Technorati is tracking, you can be sure there are a number of them started with the intention of being the next Instapundit, or Atrios, or Powerline, or Kos. And they will flail away at it, seeking that reaction, seeking to be a part of the Big Conversation.

They (whoever “they” are) say the revolutionary aspect of blogs is that they are a “conversation.” That’s always bugged me, perhaps only on semantic terms, but it’s bugged me nonetheless. I say the real value in blogs is the individual expression. Yes, I allow comments here, and often a “conversation” develops from that, but it’s not a requirement, nor the reason I write here.

And I’m lucky. The volume of traffic I get here is “moderate” at best, and thus the site has developed a nice group of regular commenters that I appreciate and welcome. Other sites I visit are not so lucky. Sometimes it’s due to content (harsh content generates harsh comments, pro and con), but it usually seems to be traffic driven. Once your blog reaches a certain level of traffic (5,000 per day?), the comments section becomes a lot of noise.

And that’s not why I came. There are a number of sites that I no longer visit at all where my first step was to stop visiting the comments section, and still try to get some value out of the articles themselves. But there’s an ugly feedback loop there of some sort, and I can’t even go there for the articles any more (I can think of four “popular” sites that fit this description for me).

When I read someone else’s blog, I view that as a portal into one person. Whatever view they allow. While I read, I get to see through their viewpoint. That’s why I visit. Some of my favorite sites allow no comments at all, or have very few added. That doesn’t detract from their value to me.

Of course, I often read things elsewhere that spur me to write something here. If I react to it, and then write about it, is that a “conversation”? Since they followed that same model, were the pamphleteers of the 1700’s having a “conversation”? When Paul McCartney released “Just Another Day,” and John Lennon responded with “How Do You Sleep,” is that a “conversation”?

This is nothing new. What’s new is that you can express yourself without owning a printing press, or being a Beatle. You can be a broadcaster, without owning a transmitter. You don’t have to have an editor’s approval to be published, nor be granted permission to be a pundit.

That’s the wonder to me: blogging dropped almost all the traditional barriers to publication and individual expression. Even more, it created a new and neutral ground for doing so. Despite governmental attempts to squelch them, witness the tens of thousands of bloggers in Iran and China. Blogging freed their expression in ways you and I can hardly comprehend. It created a forum largely beyond any government’s control.

And, yes, this does allow you to be a part of a “conversation” that you couldn’t participate in before. No longer is punditry limited to the left two inches of the newspaper editorial page, and the “opinion making” that shapes debate in this country is now far more widespread. That is no doubt a Good Thing.

But when you reduce “conversation” to the micro, well, it doesn’t “reverse scale.” Because at that level, while you may want to have a “conversation,” you’ll be outnumbered by those who simply want an argument. A nasty one. Often one on anonymous ground, where they can (and will) say things they’d never dream of saying to someone’s face.

You’ll note the four high traffic blog examples I gave above that many people aspire to emulate are all generally considered political blogs. While they are in fact only a small percentage of the total number of blogs out there (there’s probably more baby blogs), that’s the “blog arena” that bubbles most quickly into the public consciousness. It’s my current belief that the political blogosphere is far more damaging than helpful when it comes to “conversation.” It reminds me of the devolution of Usenet, without the spam. Unfortunately, it has a much greater impact than Usenet ever did.

Or so we like to think.

Note I also qualified my opinion with the word “current.” We’re living in some harshly partisan times, and in some ways it is perfectly logical that the political blogosphere would mirror that. However, it’s been a funhouse mirror that also amplifies and distorts. Currently.

I truly expect it to get much worse, but I’m open to being surprised. Of late, I’ve tried to tune most of it out. I find myself gravitating to the collection of moderate and centrist blogs out there. And then I wonder if I’m falling into the same “echo chamber” trap of which I’ve accused the right and left in the past.

I’m at least aware of that possibility. If I thought most others were questioning themselves in the same way, that would be one thing. I’m open to the possibility that we’re all full of shit. I don’t see that elsewhere. Just a certainty it’s Those Others who are overfilled with excrement.

And just when I’ve about convinced myself it’s just me, a cynical bitter old curmudgeon … I find another:

I have been reading political blogs to try and find out what makes particular ones good meme spreaders. One the left I looked at Eschaton and DailyKos and on the right Instapundit and Little Green Morons.

Conclusions: The left is full of crop circle paranoids. The right is full of stupid angry people.

The sheer volume of information in both does manage to strip things to bare bones facts, but not by virtue of intelligence, just volume — like a colony of bacteria feeding on a corpse.

Yep. Word. What he said. And all other clichés of agreement.

While I didn’t quite start off to turn a fifth anniversary post into some kind of curmudgeonly lecture on the state of blogging, I suppose it’s as appropriate a time as any. And it is more statement than lecture, as I certainly don’t expect anybody to change … nor do I intend to change what I do here. But we’re all evolving within a relatively newborn medium, and evolution isn’t always pretty.

Of course, that’s only one side of the coin. On the other, we have the media, who can’t seem to comprehend or come to any consensus on the nature of blogs, and how they impact their business. And when you read in the media (emphasis mine), “Web logs likely numbering in the dozens provide a way for the thoughtful and the passionate to publish their views,” it’s hard to do much but giggle.

Giggle like a teenager. Because that’s what we are. We’re all teenagers, with all the good and bad that implies. We are capable of amazing new accomplishments, and astoundingly bad judgement. Some are nearly entirely juvenile, some are surprisingly mature for their age. But like all teenagers, each and every one of us is trouble waiting for a place to happen.

And like all teenagers, there will likely come a day when we’ve grown enough to look back and say, “Mom and Dad, I’m sorry I was such an ignorant pain in the ass.”

Myself included.