Death of Blogging

[commonpeople1]

I've been thinking today if blogging and livejournaling is dead. Dead in the sense that most people who used them before have gone on to acquire many more social networks, and because of the increase in their personal admin (checking Facebook, checking Twitter, checking Instagram, etc) they no longer can tolerate long pieces of writing.

Twitter, to me, seems of the time. Tiny digestible nuggets that can lead you to longer articles if you so desire, but there's no pressure to read - you can easily just move/scroll on.  Before, with blogs and livejournals, there was the online social pressure to at least skim read.  Make some noise that you were paying attention. Now, they lie unread, uncommented, unnoticed. Or saved for "later" reading.

The age of people keeping blogs to document their lives as policemen / ambulance drivers / sex workers is also dead. Again, I think personal admin has got in the way and that type of cultural product is resigned to the noughties much like a lot of reality shows.

For myself, I sat in an old cemetery for lunch today and read some Walt Whitman.  I now know that Livejournal will never be the same, but I'm Ok with continuing to write here, for myself and for the few that still read this.  I've also started writing letters to friends who refuse to use social networks, and on Monday mornings I find a cafe before work and do a bit of fiction writing.

Comments

[nisaba.livejournal.com]

I miss the heyday of LJ, especially now I'm so far away, but I'm not doing my bit to make it better really. I feel like I need to be "in the mood" to write a blog post, and that was easier when there really weren't any other choices. Now there's facebook and twitter which are much easier. I have annoyed myself in the past though by wasting an hour of time or more skimming facebook when I could have put that time (indeed, a lot less of it) into an LJ post. "I don't have time" for LJ doesn't cut it then!

[commonpeople.livejournal.com]

I miss that heyday too. I learned more from it, and got better laughs too.