I'm going to miss him. <snif>
But then, maybe now he'll have more time to comment here and hang around semi-nude with Ben.
You're right about the effort -- while commenting is effortless, coming up with interesting posts is surprisingly difficult. (Note that I haven't been doing much of it lately.) I've been much more impressed with the more prolific bloggers since I started doing it last year.
Also, I feel I get a lot out of blogging because I know a lot of the people who come to the site IRL and we get wonderful feedback in the comments. I can't see keeping it up for years if it doesn't result in those kinds of connections.
Berube has good comments. Not as good as ours, of course, but good. Yeah -- without comments, even if you knew people were reading, it'd be a pretty bleak hobby.
You're right about the effort -- while commenting is effortless, coming up with interesting posts is surprisingly difficult. (Note that I haven't been doing much of it lately.)
Ha ha, that's why my comments are so wonderful; I have no blog of my own. Not all peaches and light, is it, those of you who rose from commenter to blogger?
Somebody like Bérubé probably gets more engaged readers in his other venues.
I can't help feeling as though we've already witnessed the heyday of the great amateur bloggers.
it'd be a pretty bleak hobby.
Only two more years to go, LB. What's with the title of the post?
Well, yes. The post makes me feel less bad about my own long hiatus from blogging. I sometimes feel irrationally guilty about it.
I think you're right about the coming to terms with the blog thing, though I'd say 2-3 years. But then I'm impatient. Even though Michael's hanging it up is proof (finally) of his sanity, it's a sad thing for us. Can't think of anyone else out there who's as smart and funny as he is. Ah well.
It's like, "Everything changed for me on September 11. I used to consider myself a Democrat, but thanks to 9/11, I'm outraged by Chappaquiddick." Seriously, I wouldn't be surprised to hear any of them go off one day about our giveaway of the Panama Canal or the insidious plot to fluoridate our drinking water. It's as if the moment they threw in their lot with Bush, they were e-mailed a Wingnut Software Package that allowed them to download every major wingnut meme propagated over the past thirty years.
12 - But what does that have to do with quitting blogging?
I can't help feeling as though we've already witnessed the heyday of the great amateur bloggers.
Yeah. I don't know if I'm right about this, but I have the impression that not a lot of new blogs (in the areas I read) have garnered a lot of readership in the last year or two. The bigger blogs all seem to be kind of first generation. (and newer successful bloggers are often those who were adopted onto old blogs, like Amanda at Pandagon. Koufax or no Koufax, I doubt MouseWords would have ended up with the readership that Pandagon now has -- the old blogroll links and readership have a big influence.)
It's a shame, because a lot of the blogs I read are feeling stale, but I'm not finding replacements for them.
It's because this type of wingnuttia is not a positive program, but an impulse driven by resentment. There are practical agendas aplenty on the right, but this is the glue that binds, and for many, it's all there is. So yeah, fluoridation, utter refusal to credit global warming, Chappaquiddick, whatever.
Greenwald a little, but I don't find his writing engaging. He does some things well, but I'm just not crazy about him
And FDL I don't enjoy -- every time I go there they seem to be getting unnecessarily hostile about trivia. I don't read it much, so I may have an unfair impression.
Oh, you mean that they've gotten successful. True.
I'm not exactly convinced that FDL and Greenwald should count as amateurs. Both of those sites seem rather purpose-driven.
For me the secret is to read mainly blogs on subjects other than politics.
I don't understand where the concern for "garnering readership" in 15 comes from. Isn't this the whole point of blogs-as-a-medium --- that they aren't subject to the same needs for economy of scale that other media are, right?
Aren't the sort of bloggers we're talking about motivated mostly by the idea that people will read their writing? I certainly am. It's not that a large readership is economically necessary, but it's psychologically desirable.
To follow on 21, look at how long Rebecca Blood or Lilly Tao been blogging. Or Chuck Taggart, one of the original foodbloggers, or Rafe Colburn, who leavens his political stuff by mostly writing about Java. Or Brad Graham, the poor schmuck who coined the word "blogosphere" as a joke. Not that burnout doesn't happen with non-political blogs, but it seems to happen more when you're frenetically trying to stay on top of current events (largely divorced from your day-to-day job).
I'd like to think that there continues to be plenty of good writing on amatuer, "mid-level" blogs, by which I suppose I mean blogs that are more or less regularly read by some hundreds of people, and are known to perhaps more, but which aren't anywhere near the top of the ecosystem. Those blogs, from what I can tell, seem to be able to truck along past the three-year mark quite well. Then again, I guess most of those wouldn't fall under the "frequently-updated" label--they often take regular prolonged breaks--and so they aren't really the kind of blogs you're talking about.
But then, maybe now he'll have more time to comment here and hang around semi-nude with Ben.
One can only hope. SEK claimed Bérubé at least reads the comments here, which made me go all tingly.
Not that burnout doesn't happen with non-political blogs, but it seems to happen more when you're frenetically trying to stay on top of current events (largely divorced from your day-to-day job).
This is, I think, absolutely correct. I read a lot of "amatuer" philosophy blogs, and most of them seem to be doing fine.
trying to stay on top of current events
Having a busy comment section is also exhausting.
What's FDL?
Fontana's Dangling Lab
SEK claimed Bérubé at least reads the comments here
I did claim that moments after he commented, too, if I remember correctly. But yes, Michael did say he reads Unfogged, but refuses to comment regularly anywhere more than three people seem at-least-as-if-not-more-clever-than him.
Please don't let him be referring to w-lfs-n....
34: I think he was, but only vis-a-vis his being slapped around by ogged.
anywhere more than three people seem at-least-as-if-not-more-clever-than him
But how would this have any relevance to Unfogged?
Speaking for myself, posting on my site is a way of self-publishing. It's an alternative to not writing anything at all, or to writing things and letting my heirs find them after I die (viz. Emily Dickinson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Flann O'Brien).
When I get attention I'm happy, and I do wish I'd get more attention, but I've never had targets or benchmarks or a rational business plan or anything.
Fucking commenters. 40 was supposed to appear at position 36.
41: Yeah, it's a real tragedy that it didn't work out.
I wouldn't call it a tragedy, exactly, but thanks.
41: See! ben'd never come up with that.
(The original, this time with working link!)
