A Brave New World
After sliding into anonymity in recent months, I realised this week that my problem isn't with blogging platforms themselves – my problem is me.
Perhaps it would help if I explain – and warn you in advance that this is one of those explanations where the entire post goes sideways for a while, before hopefully finding it's way back.
The famous hosted blogging platforms – Wordpress, Tumblr, Medium, and LiveJournal (yes, people still use LiveJournal) have become social networks. I hesitate to call them walled gardens, because they can be opened to the world – it's just that they have polished the experience for fellow members of their own platform so much that it becomes an effort to step outside.
It's easy to fall into the same trap that so many have done with their political views in the last few years – mistaking the concordant voices in the algorithmic timeline that surrounds them for “everybody”. Little by little, each platform becomes an increasingly remote island.
More by accident than design, Blogger has avoided such a fate. There was the whole “Google+” escapade, but that's been rolled back and swept from the history books now.
Anyway.
Why was it such a mistake for me to publish my writing to a utopian blogging platform with wonderful commenting, liking, following, and subscription features? Because of all of those things – I spent my time commenting, liking, following, and subscribing – and progressively less time writing. With a foot in two or three of the social camps, the “time to write” rapidly turned into a few minutes late at night. Even worse, the visible manifestation of likes, comments, and faux popularity began to distort the words I might share – subliminally causing me to write what I thought others might want to read, rather than what I wanted to write.
It stops today.
I have returned to my roots – posting my words to a slightly crappy blogging platform outside of the smooth, polished, incestuous world of the tent-pole social blogging destinations. Just my words – no stock photos, no re-blogs, no guest posts, and no references to anybody or anything else. Just me.
I'll get off my soap-box now, and go put the kettle on.