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Creaking back to life (revisited).
Wednesday, August 26th, 2020 12:32 pmI see – or rather gather the feeling - from general comments and posts over on Face Book that there is the beginning of a tidal shift away from many social media platforms, and that one in particular. I don’t know how prevalent that is likely to become, but already I am getting notifications of people joining my friends list here on Dreamwidth.
This is rather ironic, though not unwelcome. Dreamwidth is the continuation for many of us, of our old LiveJournal accounts. My Dreamwidth account for instance only formally dates back to (I think) 2013, but the entries, imported from LiveJournal stretch back an entire decade earlier.
I have rather missed the art of the blog. I have never quite stopped writing here, but it has become rather more intermittent – a note here or there, every few months instead of the several each day, every day back in the 2000s.
Part of the reason, of course, is the general drift across to FaceBook. It is much quicker and easier to post up interesting, or entertaining nuggets there than it is here, and the effect is much, much quicker. Participation and response on all blogging platforms is now quite minimal and writing can feel very much like howling into the void and I don’t think that is what blogging is really about. It’s different from keeping a diary, which is for personal use only. A blog (to me, at least) is a place where you can say something that you might also add to your personal diary, but which might also interest your friends, or some of them. It’s the hope for some measured interaction and feedback, which is often, but not always, more focused than on platforms like Face Book, or Twitter. It’s generally more measured and polite, too.
I don’t recall disagreements getting out of hand on LiveJournal of Dreamwidth. There is room for discussion, explanation and debate. For reflection. You can bounce ideas and perhaps be shot down in flames, but not with the casual venom that is evident on some platforms.
I truly think that some friendships have ended because of mis-readings of comments on social media, or because of unfortunate coincidences where one or more entries, which should properly be separated by time and context, end up appearing in immediate sequence because of some detached algorithm. What were otherwise unrelated items become linked in the mind of the reader and can take on the appearance of some kind of concerted attack, where the author hadn’t even imagined a gibe.
Be that as it may, welcome to the people who have subscribed in the past couple of days. I am going to make an effort to write more. I need to brush off the cobwebs a bit.
This is rather ironic, though not unwelcome. Dreamwidth is the continuation for many of us, of our old LiveJournal accounts. My Dreamwidth account for instance only formally dates back to (I think) 2013, but the entries, imported from LiveJournal stretch back an entire decade earlier.
I have rather missed the art of the blog. I have never quite stopped writing here, but it has become rather more intermittent – a note here or there, every few months instead of the several each day, every day back in the 2000s.
Part of the reason, of course, is the general drift across to FaceBook. It is much quicker and easier to post up interesting, or entertaining nuggets there than it is here, and the effect is much, much quicker. Participation and response on all blogging platforms is now quite minimal and writing can feel very much like howling into the void and I don’t think that is what blogging is really about. It’s different from keeping a diary, which is for personal use only. A blog (to me, at least) is a place where you can say something that you might also add to your personal diary, but which might also interest your friends, or some of them. It’s the hope for some measured interaction and feedback, which is often, but not always, more focused than on platforms like Face Book, or Twitter. It’s generally more measured and polite, too.
I don’t recall disagreements getting out of hand on LiveJournal of Dreamwidth. There is room for discussion, explanation and debate. For reflection. You can bounce ideas and perhaps be shot down in flames, but not with the casual venom that is evident on some platforms.
I truly think that some friendships have ended because of mis-readings of comments on social media, or because of unfortunate coincidences where one or more entries, which should properly be separated by time and context, end up appearing in immediate sequence because of some detached algorithm. What were otherwise unrelated items become linked in the mind of the reader and can take on the appearance of some kind of concerted attack, where the author hadn’t even imagined a gibe.
Be that as it may, welcome to the people who have subscribed in the past couple of days. I am going to make an effort to write more. I need to brush off the cobwebs a bit.