Unplug. (Re)connect.
Blogging.
A silly, ungainly word made up by smashing two inocuous syllables together with sufficient force to permantly weld them into something greater than themselves. Web log... sounds like a coder’s to-do list. Web logging, equally dry. Weblog, dumb word. Deftly apply principles of INGSOC and newspeak and - bang - the “blog” is blorn, ahem, born. Could there be a better name for the unlikely offspring of the early aughts tech nerd and timeless impulse of the unemployable English major? I think not.
Blogging requires a shred of discipline and a rudimentary understanding of composition and audience to be successful. It’s work. It’s luck. It’s creativity. It’s opportunity. In a word, it’s writing. Further, it’s writing that’s accessible to anyone with a computer and is unconstrained by editorial edict, writing conventions, or any form of standard whatsoever. No rules, just write.
Blogging promised to connect people across the sea of connected thought. It gave voice to the previously voiceless. For a moment in time, it did exactly that. Then, as any Gibson-steeped coolhunter will tell you, wild popularity would become its fall. Like a particularly nasty viral outbreak, when an infection of banality, laziness, popularity, and vanity tore through the cell walls and ripped its way though the plasma of this nascent medium, it created - through inertia and inevitability - opportunity. The cells which survived organized into the original host organism (and eventually Patient Zero) for a social media phenomenon which would rewire the brain case housings of billions (yes, with a b) of people.
How? Why? Well... because real writing is hard. Blather is easy. People love to blather, and the people want easy.
They also want free.
The popular blogging platforms were free, but the ability to write certainly wasn’t. A spark of creativity helps, but a spark needs air and fuel to burst to life lest it give up its last red glow. Free brought endless fuel - human capital, users (greetings, user!) seeking the dopamine rush of a fan base and that promise of fame and stardom. Or at least a momentary notoriety.
Air. An inexhaustible source of oxygen. An environment. The Internet. MySpace. With MySpace, you didn’t have to be a writer. You could post photos, videos, music, text... whatever you wanted. Designed as a portal for emerging musicians to showcase the truly indie, it was almost instantly co-opted into something else entirely - a social media network before that phrase became a household term. Posts, likes, follows, followers... what was once hard won as a blogger could be instantly achieved with the strategic placement of a pot leaf, cat .GIF, or picture of a chick in a thong. We were chasing that digital cred long before the meme, blue thumb, or the hashtag would ever be a thing. Then came Twitter. A place where anyone and everyone had a voice - as long as you kept it to a few characters - simultaneously distilling thought while spreading intellect margarine-thin. Finally, Facebook. The juggernaut. The place all of us would plug into, and the place which would plug into all of us.
Where blogging gave some a soapbox and a bullhorn, Facebook would give everyone a podium and a PA system. Friends, family, followers!!! became the 21st century analog to Caesar’s famous salutation, and we all got to be Caesar on our wall. For free. Forever. The “like” becomes the new social media currency, “unfriending” becomes it’s consequence, “friend” becomes a commodity. Technology reforms itself around this new medium, and service providers are required to make it available anywhere and everywhere. Our culture evolves around it, merges with it. The Cloud ensures our immortality.
Today, social media has become so ingrained in our day to day life we cannot function properly without it. Cultural expectations are set around it. Our social norms now include a share button (please like and share this post to see more content like this). It has also killed the art of the conversation, slaughtered what it means to be someone’s friend, and shattered all subtlety of voice.
Anyone caught singing Go Tell It On The Mountain is now publicly hailed or excoriated by people shouting from the tops of their digital trash piles. Those trash piles are being mined, their contents turned against us so we can be turned against each other. Families are being torn apart across lines that are carefully engineered by people paid to put us into boxes our lives don’t cleanly fit. We are letting our lives be redefined so they better fit target market demographics so we can be sold the right brand of food, clothes, cars, phones, and politics. We sign it away in EULAs and when we click that box so our “quiz results” get shared with our friends. We happily and willingly live our lives in this constructed world and are all to eager to give the tiller over to people who know what few of us are willing to accept:
Free... free never was.
This is why I’ve chosen to walk away from Facebook and abandon Twitter. It’s why we no longer have or watch broadcast television in our home. Our Internet comes from a municipal provider and not a content pusher. My life is and will always remain heavily invested in digital communication and technology - I’m certainly no technological Luddite. I’ve kept an Instagram account open and actively share photos of my life and hobbies, but that’s about it. However, I’m slowly and surely working to unplug from the matrix of networks engineered to steer my life and somehow remain connected digitally to the world in word and pictures. I’m a writer and a snapshot photographer. I’m a cook, a shooter, and a motorcycle rider. I’m a father, husband, and a man. All of these things are good, and all of them are me.
I invite you to follow this blog, if you want, and invite you to share my writing if you feel so inclined. It’s high time we gather around the campfire instead of marching forward from a bonfire. It’s time we learn how to talk, how to read, and how to write again. Without emoji.
Who knows where this blog will go... what I do know, though, is that is entirely up to me, and that’s how it should be.
A silly, ungainly word made up by smashing two inocuous syllables together with sufficient force to permantly weld them into something greater than themselves. Web log... sounds like a coder’s to-do list. Web logging, equally dry. Weblog, dumb word. Deftly apply principles of INGSOC and newspeak and - bang - the “blog” is blorn, ahem, born. Could there be a better name for the unlikely offspring of the early aughts tech nerd and timeless impulse of the unemployable English major? I think not.
Blogging requires a shred of discipline and a rudimentary understanding of composition and audience to be successful. It’s work. It’s luck. It’s creativity. It’s opportunity. In a word, it’s writing. Further, it’s writing that’s accessible to anyone with a computer and is unconstrained by editorial edict, writing conventions, or any form of standard whatsoever. No rules, just write.
Blogging promised to connect people across the sea of connected thought. It gave voice to the previously voiceless. For a moment in time, it did exactly that. Then, as any Gibson-steeped coolhunter will tell you, wild popularity would become its fall. Like a particularly nasty viral outbreak, when an infection of banality, laziness, popularity, and vanity tore through the cell walls and ripped its way though the plasma of this nascent medium, it created - through inertia and inevitability - opportunity. The cells which survived organized into the original host organism (and eventually Patient Zero) for a social media phenomenon which would rewire the brain case housings of billions (yes, with a b) of people.
How? Why? Well... because real writing is hard. Blather is easy. People love to blather, and the people want easy.
They also want free.
The popular blogging platforms were free, but the ability to write certainly wasn’t. A spark of creativity helps, but a spark needs air and fuel to burst to life lest it give up its last red glow. Free brought endless fuel - human capital, users (greetings, user!) seeking the dopamine rush of a fan base and that promise of fame and stardom. Or at least a momentary notoriety.
Air. An inexhaustible source of oxygen. An environment. The Internet. MySpace. With MySpace, you didn’t have to be a writer. You could post photos, videos, music, text... whatever you wanted. Designed as a portal for emerging musicians to showcase the truly indie, it was almost instantly co-opted into something else entirely - a social media network before that phrase became a household term. Posts, likes, follows, followers... what was once hard won as a blogger could be instantly achieved with the strategic placement of a pot leaf, cat .GIF, or picture of a chick in a thong. We were chasing that digital cred long before the meme, blue thumb, or the hashtag would ever be a thing. Then came Twitter. A place where anyone and everyone had a voice - as long as you kept it to a few characters - simultaneously distilling thought while spreading intellect margarine-thin. Finally, Facebook. The juggernaut. The place all of us would plug into, and the place which would plug into all of us.
Where blogging gave some a soapbox and a bullhorn, Facebook would give everyone a podium and a PA system. Friends, family, followers!!! became the 21st century analog to Caesar’s famous salutation, and we all got to be Caesar on our wall. For free. Forever. The “like” becomes the new social media currency, “unfriending” becomes it’s consequence, “friend” becomes a commodity. Technology reforms itself around this new medium, and service providers are required to make it available anywhere and everywhere. Our culture evolves around it, merges with it. The Cloud ensures our immortality.
Today, social media has become so ingrained in our day to day life we cannot function properly without it. Cultural expectations are set around it. Our social norms now include a share button (please like and share this post to see more content like this). It has also killed the art of the conversation, slaughtered what it means to be someone’s friend, and shattered all subtlety of voice.
Anyone caught singing Go Tell It On The Mountain is now publicly hailed or excoriated by people shouting from the tops of their digital trash piles. Those trash piles are being mined, their contents turned against us so we can be turned against each other. Families are being torn apart across lines that are carefully engineered by people paid to put us into boxes our lives don’t cleanly fit. We are letting our lives be redefined so they better fit target market demographics so we can be sold the right brand of food, clothes, cars, phones, and politics. We sign it away in EULAs and when we click that box so our “quiz results” get shared with our friends. We happily and willingly live our lives in this constructed world and are all to eager to give the tiller over to people who know what few of us are willing to accept:
Free... free never was.
This is why I’ve chosen to walk away from Facebook and abandon Twitter. It’s why we no longer have or watch broadcast television in our home. Our Internet comes from a municipal provider and not a content pusher. My life is and will always remain heavily invested in digital communication and technology - I’m certainly no technological Luddite. I’ve kept an Instagram account open and actively share photos of my life and hobbies, but that’s about it. However, I’m slowly and surely working to unplug from the matrix of networks engineered to steer my life and somehow remain connected digitally to the world in word and pictures. I’m a writer and a snapshot photographer. I’m a cook, a shooter, and a motorcycle rider. I’m a father, husband, and a man. All of these things are good, and all of them are me.
I invite you to follow this blog, if you want, and invite you to share my writing if you feel so inclined. It’s high time we gather around the campfire instead of marching forward from a bonfire. It’s time we learn how to talk, how to read, and how to write again. Without emoji.
Who knows where this blog will go... what I do know, though, is that is entirely up to me, and that’s how it should be.
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