Bringing Back The Blog Bounce

Simon Reynolds has a lot of blogs. Forty-four by my count. The only one I follow is blissblog, which I think might be the primary, if that's an appropriate term. 

Reynolds, of course, is one of the more successful and widely-known music journalists of the millennium, having written for many publications, both print and digital. He's probably even better-known as the author of a number of critically and commercially successful books, like Rip It Up and Start Again and Shock and Awe, both of which I've read and would recommend.

As well as being a professional journalist and writer, however, he's also a high-profile advocate for both blogging and the blog format, which is presumably why the Guardian asked him to write a piece on the topic. I read it this morning, in conjuction with a blog post he wrote that goes into the subject in a kind of granular detail that would no doubt have driven his editor at the Guardian to a frenzy of blue pencil, which does rather make Simon's point about the reason for having a blog in the first place.

Unlike certain bloggers I could mention, Simon doesn't harp on about the supposedly spectacular decline in cultural importance and impact of the long-form, text-centric blog, something I feel is often over-emphasized, particularly by individuals who experienced a personal moment in the sun that's now passed into shadow. Instead, he draws attention to a particular aspect of the hobby, one which he feels has rather sadly declined.

It's a phenomenon he labels "inter-blog communication", a somewhat dry and formal description for the organic, whimsical, occasionally joyous way that an idea sometimes takes hold and runs across numerous blogs like a grass fire. In this I have to agree with Simon that "Blogging has become more of a solitary activity. A blogpost will be sparked by something "out there," or by something within, but rarely in response to another blog. "

He does qualify his observation with "At least, in this particular corner of the 'sphere", by which he's referring specifically to the once-fractious, fizzing collective of music-based blogs. I follow a few of those but I'm not going to pretend I was there when the kind of interactions Simon's missing were a fundemental feature. I suspect that, by the time I started reading music blogs, they were already, as they do seem to be now, inwardly focused and somewhat solipsistic.

The bubble in which this blog floats was originally concerned almost exclusively with gaming, specifically MMORPG gaming. With such a tight focus, perhaps it was always more likely that conversations between blogs would generate spontaneously but there also seemed to be more of a sense of collective responsibility back then.

There was always at least one blogger who'd take it upon themselves to post a round-up of what other blogs were doing, something that strongly promoted traffic between blogs and often encouraged a rolling discussion of topics of the moment, across several posts and numerous comment threads. It's been a while since we had anyone willing to take on that kind of self-imposed responsibility and I can imagine why. It must be a lot of work and the thanks are few. 

It also seems to me that there used to be a significantly higher frequency of sporadic conversations breaking out across blogs, where one blogger posted something, another took it up and a few more joined on behind, all with posts of their own. It does still happen, just not as often. I've been posting here for more than a decade and I think it's hard to argue that inter-blog communication isn't what it was when I started.

I could (But won't.) name the handful of bloggers in my blog roll who can still be relied on to start these kinds of conversations or keep them going, when they flare up. Ironically, I suspect it's the existence of a number of very extensive blog rolls, such as my own or Syp's, that can act as something of a drag anchor on the kinds of to and fro we used to see more often.

Even more ironically, I wonder if the very success of events like Blaugust, as they open out to include not just gaming blogs but blogs, vlogs and personal websites covering everything and anything, end up mitigating against the kind of mutual sharing of ideas that results in flurries of posts on the same topic. In theory, a wider topic pool should generate more opportunities for jumping in but I fear the effect my be just the reverse.

During Blaugust itself there's always an admirable degree of cross-pollination but when the event comes to an end it's not always clear how much of that continues. I know that, after years of joining in with Blaugust, The Newbie Blogger Initiative and other community-driven events, I now have a lot of blogs in my own blog roll that I rarely visit. It's not that I'm not interested in them once the events are over but there's only so much time I can spend reading blogs, particularly given I actually follow quite a lot of other blogs, on subjects that particularly interest me, ones, like Reynolds', that aren't in my blog roll.

In that Guardian piece, Simon says something I find a little paradoxical: "If community persists, it’s on the level of any individual blog’s comment box." This feels both true and untrue. I certainly value my comment thread more than any statistics Google or Blogger can give me but I know from grim, personal experience that commenting on blogs is a lot harder than it ought to be. 

At least three times in the last week I've given up trying to post comments on blogs - after I've written the comments, too - because the technical challenge of getting the comment to register was just too onerous to overcome. It applies equally to Blogger, Wordpress, Tumblr and any of the outlier platforms. All of them seem far more concerned with keeping unwanted comments out than allowing welcome ones in.

The supreme irony in all of this is that, when I wanted to leave a comment on Simon Reynolds' blog, letting him know that his observations on the decline of inter-blog communication had led directly to an example that had even leapt the barrier between blogospheres, and also to point him towards the Blaugust phenomenon, something I thought might interest him, I couldn't find any way to leave a comment on his blog at all! 

As far as I can tell, blissblog doesn't accept comments. I can't speak for his forty-three other blogs...

In essence, though, I think he makes a fair point. Despite the barriers, I think I am more likely now to leave a comment on a thread than I am to write a full-length post of my own, linking back to the blog that inspired it. For example, this morning I left a comment at Time To Loot that I did consider turning into a post here, not least because it seemed as though Naithin was addressing a sufficiently broad and important enough topic to justify a full response.

Instead, I chose to write this, which is at least an example of the kind of communication, the decline of which Simon Reynolds was bemoaning, even if he'll never know about it. 

His article and post have also inspired me to make a New Year's Resolution (Something I rarely do.) I resolve to try and be more mindful in 2024 about taking topic cues from other bloggers. I used to do it without thinking. It's really not that hard.

Of course, if this follows the pattern of most New Year's Resolutions, I'll have forgotten I even made it before January's out. That's why I don't make New Year's Resolutions.

If that happens, do feel free to remind me. 

Or better yet, write a post about it.

A note on AI used in this post.

Both images created by DALL-E 3 via Microsoft Image Creator.

The prompt for both was the same: "Blogging has become more of a solitary activity. New Yorker Cartoon style."