I haven’t been blogging forever–it’s only been something like 2 and a half or 3 years. Of course I read blogs long before that, and got to know people’s online written presentations of themselves pretty well. Blogs were where introverted wordy nerds got to blow off some steam in the most sympathetic way possible–in writing and from a safe emotional distance. When I first got into this seriously it was where I found like-minded folk to play with in a way we all grokked. Words. Sure, we weren’t all like minded politically or religiously or sexually or movie-viewingly. But we all loved to read and to write and to jumble and assort those 26 letters into something more than just symbols. We talked. Eventually we braved public meeting places. Those first meetups were all shy smiles and oh-my-gosh-it’s-YOU sort of happy gatherings. We genuinely liked the people we’d come to know because we were kindred spirits of a multi-sided die/chess club sort.
Then the “entrepreneurs” found us. The first business person to truly tap the use of blogs at least had the decency to become one of us. Jim Reams took the time to actually write good stuff and get to know people the way bloggers used to. He’d read your stuff, you’d read his stuff. You both realised you liked this band or that politician and he’d make you laugh and you’d say you laughed. Then he opened a business and cleverly used his blog contacts as a way to get more publicity for that business.
All was good.
I don’t know quite when it happened, but the other entrepreneurs that followed started to steamroller the social aspect. It stopped being about “hey I liked your post on Jesus and Granola” and started being about Who Are You, Who Do You Know And How Many People Consider You A Worthy Contact. I’ve actually been asked by more than one person what my daily hit count is. If it isn’t X, than it isn’t high enough and I don’t rate.
I’ve become close friends with more than one blogger. One of them is one of the more highly-sought-after in terms of “metrics”. (“Metrics” is what they want to call it when they care about the amount of money a venture capitalist will give them if you are somehow involved.) Yet I can’t shake the feeling that those who care about Metrics don’t really care at all about the thoughts and ideas that happen here there and everywhere.
I didn’t get into blogging to become a whore. I resent those who come to blogging in order to pimp. I’m sure there’s a nicer way to express that thought, but I’m at a loss for those particular words.
Just Another Pretty Farce 
Getting to read what you’ve written that may have been sparked by something that I’ve written. That’s why I blog. If you had been the only person who read that post, that would have been enough ‘metrics’ to make it worthwhile. Thanks.
I don’t understand. Are you no longer able to write for pleasure because others write for money?
Or are you, as I suspect, mourning the loss of community we used to feel (something I’ve learned was pretty unique) in the Nashville blogging community?
Thank God for paid blogging, or my family would be one of those sad economic statistics Bridgett so often quotes.
And thank God for sites run just for pleasure, where we don’t have to worry about hit counts or SEO or metrics. People like me and I suspect, you, Kat) are not free if we cannot freely write.
As much as I love Brittney, and am STILL pissed off about events at NIT, if we no longer have a cohesive blogging community in Nashville, we have only ourselves to blame. Yes, most of us are a little introverted and need a little push, but the old saying still applies: if you want a friend, be a friend.
When the election is over, I’ll jump in a lot more. It’s hard to NOT talk politics right now, and I cherish friendships that might be endagered, because I happen to be drawn personally to people who are far more liberal than I (I try, but I have little in common personality-wise with most Nashville area conservatives). I feel surrounded, and in that environment, I’m afraid I’ll become a jackass.
I feel like Lon Chaney Jr, in that respect.
Where was I? Oh yeah. The world of for-pleasure blogging is not dead. It can live alongside commercial blogging. I would think many of us are the personification of that.
I’m just as much a sucker for the good ole days as anyone else, but I do so knowing that my nostalgia is a trick of the mind. The good old days were pretty bad, too. đŸ™‚
Slart–
It’s a selective clique. I know how hard I’ve tried to befriend many in the community, and they don’t want anything to do with me. I heard more lies and rumors about me than in grade school, and yet very few have taken the time to get to know me and find out who I am for themselves.
E mail me if you’d ever like to go for coffee. MissSharonCobb@aol.com.
Slart??? Never heard from you.
That’s: MissSharonCobb@aol.com
When would you like to go for coffee?