Saturday, May 3, 2003
The past few weeks I’ve noticed that most of the people I normally expect to update their blogs once every couple of days have all but stopped. Well, that’s not entirely true. Some have hidden their blogs from the public, only giving access to a few close friends.
What’s going on?
I think a few different things may have happened:
1. Building a website and watching traffic take-off to some level is exciting. Knowing that twenty or fifty people look at your blog every day or week or whatever (“read” is too strong of a verb) gives the same sort of charge that having essays appear in a locally published indy zine might. Once the giddiness of having one’s writing out in the world wears off and the traffic no longer goes up every week, the allure of keeping a blog might fade.
2. Some blogs began as ways to communicate life’s everyday affairs with a group of friends that may not otherwise get to hear what’s going on. Time passes, people spread across the globe — it’s a nice way to stay in touch. But. Then the friends seem to stop reading it, and the writer doesn’t feel compelled to keep the people who do read entertained, so the quantity (and quality) of posting decreases.
3. The true public nature of a blog becomes apparent, causing the writer to worry and either stop posting or hide the blog. It might dawn on the writer that people at work or their grandmother has been reading their blog about how they got ass-drunk at a club downtown during a promo party for some porn website.
4. Blogging takes time and energy and doesn’t get you paid. If you have a job, you might have creative outlets that you consider to be more rewarding.
So, anyway. Some thoughts. I enjoy writing on my little blog, so I probably will continue even though the above factor apply to me in different degrees — none enough to make me stop, at any rate.
Alright.
