Thoughts on the end of the liberal conspiracy.
Liberal Conspiracy is gone. It's something that's clearly been approaching for a while, such has been the dwindling number of posts, but it's still rather sad. My thanks go out to Sunny for considering my witterings to be worthy of occasionally featuring there, and I wish him luck in his future ventures. This also seems as good a time as any for a brief interlude of introspection, so here we go.
Sunny pulling the plug on LC is indicative of where blogging has gone over the last couple of years, which is pretty much down the toilet. Perhaps I just haven't kept up, but away from the group blogs it seems moribund. A few are still going fairly strong, others aren't updated as regularly as before, while plenty have thrown in the towel. Clearly, individual blogs can still grow exponentially, for which see Wings Over Scotland, it's just they need a well-defined niche.
I would say this, but for me the real explanation for the decline isn't the mainstream media coming late to the party and overtaking the amateurs, it's that most writers now spend their time on Twitter rather than blogging. Each to their own and everything, I just don't like the format and way it inevitably leads to circle jerks, as well as the tendency it inspires in trying to one up those you disagree with, which leads absolutely nowhere. It also seems to lead some to believe that Twitter, or rather their followers and those they follow are the internet, the culmination of which seemed to be the "boycott" of August. I'd like to think blogging broadens rather than limits horizons, while social networking in general does the opposite. Might just be me.
It may also be somewhat to do with how ghastly politics is and has been for the last couple of years. People seem to have tuned out to the point where Russell Brand being his normal, half-berk half-idiot savant self inspires more comment than anything in months. You can focus when the government of the day is doing one or two things that are spectacularly ill-advised and wrong; when the coalition seems determined to bugger things up on so many different levels, it tends to inspire apathy rather than opposition. With so many struggling to make ends meet it also leaves you determined to make the most of the leisure time you have, and while I might be the kind of sad bastard who likes smashing out hundreds of words every day, plenty of others who might have started out before think better of it now.
All this said, I for one am still fairly happy to keep going on. I'd be lying if I said I hadn't thought of putting an end to Obsolete/septicisle or whatever stupid name this site has quite a few times down the years, but for one reason or another I've continued. Why stop now that the "competition" is dwindling? Let's give it till Christmas, at least.
(Thanks to everyone who does humour me. And if you're still reading, thank you especially.)
Sunny pulling the plug on LC is indicative of where blogging has gone over the last couple of years, which is pretty much down the toilet. Perhaps I just haven't kept up, but away from the group blogs it seems moribund. A few are still going fairly strong, others aren't updated as regularly as before, while plenty have thrown in the towel. Clearly, individual blogs can still grow exponentially, for which see Wings Over Scotland, it's just they need a well-defined niche.
I would say this, but for me the real explanation for the decline isn't the mainstream media coming late to the party and overtaking the amateurs, it's that most writers now spend their time on Twitter rather than blogging. Each to their own and everything, I just don't like the format and way it inevitably leads to circle jerks, as well as the tendency it inspires in trying to one up those you disagree with, which leads absolutely nowhere. It also seems to lead some to believe that Twitter, or rather their followers and those they follow are the internet, the culmination of which seemed to be the "boycott" of August. I'd like to think blogging broadens rather than limits horizons, while social networking in general does the opposite. Might just be me.
It may also be somewhat to do with how ghastly politics is and has been for the last couple of years. People seem to have tuned out to the point where Russell Brand being his normal, half-berk half-idiot savant self inspires more comment than anything in months. You can focus when the government of the day is doing one or two things that are spectacularly ill-advised and wrong; when the coalition seems determined to bugger things up on so many different levels, it tends to inspire apathy rather than opposition. With so many struggling to make ends meet it also leaves you determined to make the most of the leisure time you have, and while I might be the kind of sad bastard who likes smashing out hundreds of words every day, plenty of others who might have started out before think better of it now.
All this said, I for one am still fairly happy to keep going on. I'd be lying if I said I hadn't thought of putting an end to Obsolete/septicisle or whatever stupid name this site has quite a few times down the years, but for one reason or another I've continued. Why stop now that the "competition" is dwindling? Let's give it till Christmas, at least.
(Thanks to everyone who does humour me. And if you're still reading, thank you especially.)
Labels: bloggocks, Liberal Conspiracy, personal shit, politics, social networking websites, Twitter, we're all doomed
| Permalink
Post a Comment