Sunny Vergara has a great post over at The Wily Filipino, on blogging. I am experiencing a bit of nostalgia over his post, what it once was like in a space that I now complain daily is rife with noise, clutter, thoughtlessness and insincerity.
Back in the Day
So we are blogging about blogging again, and about social networks. Indeed, back in the day, blogging was a less self-conscious endeavor, and the blog was that space to report our mundane and routine, and it was also the means by which we got to know other writers. Friendships and collaborations began in blog world, folks were or seemed sincerely interested in what was going on in one another’s lives.
I began blogging in grad school, and the space became crucial for my gnoshing on ideas for papers and projects. I’d post my rambling thoughts on process, poem drafts in their infancy and the texts and productions informing these nascent drafts. What was I listening to on iTunes, what films, documentaries, visual art I was viewing, what texts I was immersed in or revisiting, where I was people watching and eavesdropping on conversations in public city spaces, where and when I was just listening to my surroundings, and what these were telling me.
Other bloggers would join in and comment on the poems in progress, discuss their take on Apocalypse Now, point me to other literature, media and various other cultural stimuli. Hence, Poeta en San Francisco was born on my first blog, as much as it was born in poetry workshops, and it’s a similar case with Diwata. As you can see, this was a much needed collaborative or communal process, given the solitude of writing in my little Downtown Oakland studio apartment, given the cultural and political disconnects I experienced in grad school.
Other folks were also discussing their cultural, political, literary issues and works in progress, and I would also jump in on their blogs to comment, share my take on the issue at hand, respond to the blogger and to the other commenters, actually have conversations with them. A UC Berkeley Conference on Filipino Americans and Beauty was born in blog interaction, spearheaded by Gladys Nubla and Joanne Rondilla, whom I met in blog world before I ever met them in the flesh. Same is true with Sunny, who I’d only known of as a prof at SFSU and blogger; I remember eventually setting up a time for me to drop by his office in the Ethnic Studies building to give him a copy of Gravities of Center. He became one of my MFA thesis advisors for Poeta en San Francisco. He’s taught my first two books in Asian American Studies classes, and today I count him among my good friends.
And of course, some of you know how I met my husband. I mean, on whose blog I met my husband. ♥
So yes, it was a very fruitful and enthusiastic time. In addition to these real interactions, we were content creators. We didn’t know it at the time; we didn’t use that term. The content was also good quality, precisely because of our lack of self-consciousness.
Since then, as Sunny says, things have changed. I wonder if e-world became too big, or if the novelty of connecting in e-space wore off, or it just ceased to be concretely useful. Oscar and I were just talking about this the other day, that I had once thought it was because so many people were now on mobile devices that folks started opting for brevity over quality content.
Reader Engagement
This is another term that we didn’t use back in the day, for what we were already doing, engaging one another’s writings in thoughtful ways. Sunny talks about his previous belief that Facebook, “romping about in a walled garden, with the outside world unable to peek in,” was something that had changed blogging and our willingness to engage one another thoughtfully in open space. I want to agree with this, because somewhere along the way, the open space that is the blog became a daunting place to be. When did this happen?
Sunny also writes:
The lesson I learned here: you take the site and the content to the reader, and they should be free to discuss and converse wherever they want.
I suppose he’s right, and that my dissatisfaction with the lack of dialogue has less to do with social media, and more to do with something else.
One thing I have had to remind myself is that just because folks mostly do not leave thoughtful comments these days (barring the three or four of you who actually do here) does not mean they are not thoughtfully engaging my writing. Some people still read these substantial blog posts, and still think about the questions I pose. Still, I do think they are in the minority. My stat counter tells me how many or few hits come over from FB, Twitter, Google+, RSS feed readers, and other places. On pure numbers, I can tell you that the most fruitless and the most noise-filled e-space I occupy is Twitter. It’s kind of useless to be there.
Then there’s the other, non-quantifiable evidence, comments that indicate that the commenter has not in fact read any of what I’ve written (why bother commenting then?), or comments that indicate that the commenter is only responding to a decontextualized piece of my entire post. (Addendum: there are also the comments that indicate the commenter is not engaging even minimally, and really only interested in using my comments section to serve his own agenda.)
In the words of Depeche Mode, “people are people…” and that’s that. The same social dynamics that manifest themselves in non-virtual spaces also manifest themselves in e-spaces. Back then, I think we thought that wouldn’t be the case. Upon realizing this was, in fact, the case, I think we decided to be in denial about it, and just blame social media and technology instead.
Onward
So what’s next? Google+ is manageable so far, perhaps because there are relatively fewer people there. But people being people, then I suspect the same thing will happen at G+ that happens at FB, that happens at Twitter, folks accumulating contacts to accumulate contacts.
As for myself, I just need to keep doing what I’m doing, writing to work out my work, being skeptical of the hype around new social media, but mostly just to keep writing in this public space to work out my work, maybe write a book. Yes, this is what I want to get back to; having this blog be the space where I continue to process what needs processing, so I can continue to envision a project, write it to completion, see it through to publication and beyond.
[Shout out to Anthem Salgado for his recent Art of Hustle post on utilizing those headings formats to break up chunky blocks of text! How's it look?]
“Indeed, back in the day, blogging was a less self-conscious endeavor…”
I agree. I started racruzzo a few years ago to reflect on the PEN Emerging Voices experience, my own writing process, readings/lit events I attended, books I read, drafts of poems; it was more of a process journal than anything else. Now, it’s pretty desolate over at my blog. I posted some poem drafts for NaPoWriMo to hold myself accountable to the writing, but that’s about it. I probably spend about 90% more time on FB than anywhere else (not including my email). Perhaps it has less to do with the micro bits of information, and more to do with the ease and convenience of network on FB? Folks seem to respond more on FB statuses than my blog.
I find that most of the writers I like to follow update their FB and Twitter more often than their personal blogs; so, I end up going to FB and Twitter to fish for tidbits.
I am also nostalgic for those early blogging years just from reading Sunny’s post, even though I didn’t experience them! Adobo blog-a-thons sound amazing!
Thanks, Barbara!
Rachelle
Thanks for your comments Rachelle, I’ve written before here somewhere about the blog being a sustained discipline, though I realize how silly and self-important that may come across to some! But seriously, for me, it’s the discipline of regular writing, but not just writing whatever so that I will show up in folks’ feed readers and not be forgotten! So then it’s the discipline of regular writing, or the dailiness of thoughtful writing that brings our ideas to some kind of clarity, for our projects etc. Since I am no longer in school, I don’t have that rigor in my routine anymore. At least here, I can attempt to enforce that rigor.
Oh, I forgot to mention. I’ve been mostly posting upcoming events on my blog. Which is kind of lame. These posts have inspired me to spend more time on the blog!
Hi again Rachelle, I also wanted to say that’s why I started the PAWA blog, because there were all these announcements and nowhere to put them all. I didn’t want them to overrun my own blog, and I didn’t want to crowd everyone’s email boxes. So then, PAWA blog
Feeling nostalgic too after reading this and Sunny’s post (wish I could automatically cross-post this at Sunny’s blog, too!). Those days were pretty fun and exciting, and I will never forget how excited I was to meet you all for the first time in the flesh after having admired from afar and interacted merely online.
For me, the demise of my blogs happened for at least a couple of reasons. One, the more I advanced in my PhD program, the stronger the pressure I felt to not-share so much on the blog; it was too searchable on Google, and I wasn’t as anonymous as I had planned in the beginning. The “walled garden” of FB allowed me to share with only those I wanted to. So where before I would post and write extensive comments on news, videos, and various other political topics on the blog, I began to post the same things on FB but with less commentary. This led to a different kind of thinking, of course, or perhaps a more “thoughtless” way of sharing and engaging with others. Form affects content, of course, as you well know.
Eventually, I made my more personal blog private as I approached the academic job market. That’s one of the worst things about academia: until you have tenure, there is no such thing as academic freedom. And now that tenure is slowly but surely disappearing, I don’t have much hope for the future of academia. So sad.
As for the second reason my blogs petered out, I didn’t go online as much for a period of about a year and a half because of pregnancy (my brain was mush for a while) and then because of the time-consuming nature of childcare for an infant. (Paradoxically, having a kid also encouraged me to use FB more as it was a quick way to share photos of him with family and interested friends. Writing thoughtful blog content, on the other hand, required me to sit down in one place for a considerable amount of time, which I could no longer do.) And once I returned to the e-world on a regular basis, everything had changed. My blog readership had faltered quite a bit because of my irregular and admittedly uninteresting posts, and I didn’t find blogging as fulfilling and exciting as I once had. As Rachelle mentioned, the response to status updates on FB was far quicker and more “real-time” and, for me, more fulfilling than the slower pace of the blog.
So anyway, I feel like I’m still trying to catch up with the mechanics of different social networks. I simply cannot do Twitter (I agree, too much noise). I don’t know if Google+ will be so different from FB. I guess I’ll figure it out when they open it to everyone.
Alas Gladys, I miss those days too and am always happy to hear from you! I remember I think it was you (I could be wrong tho) who once said that I had an advantage (over academics) being in the arts, and blogging in a public forum. While my writing is indeed scrutinized, the standards are different. I do think artists can afford notoriety, which doesn’t mean we should strive for it for sake of itself!!! But yes, when fracas and hurt feelings and other people’s drama result from stuff I’ve posted here, it doesn’t hurt my writing career, but rather, causes some editors to come after me to ask me to contribute work to their publication projects.
I definitely see how FB is good for sharing the family pictures. I love yours! And indeed, I want to do more of that, like I was saying – share stuff with my sisters and cousins and friends, and not the 400+ people who “follow” me but I do not know personally! So that’s why I’ve created a separate FB author page, to try to keep it separated.
More soon, I promise. Sunny’s post has got me in some good nostalgia! I think your comment warrants an entirely new blog post from me!
[One of the things I wish that blogs could incorporate/copy from FB is the "like" button and the automatic notifications for more immediate responses. So consider this comment "liked".
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I don’t remember saying that to you about artists vs. academics, but it sounds right to me. There are definitely academics who can get away with being controversial, but they are few and far between. The general message to us (especially us perpetual grad students) is to conform, conform, conform, because of the way the market is set up. The jobs are scarce, and you don’t know if Small Liberal Arts College from Small Town, USA, that has an opening in your field this year will appreciate your strong opinions on such-and-such. It’s such a rat race, because conformity is so boring and soulless and thus makes you question if it would be worth it to work in the job that hired you for your boring conformity in the first place. Yuck.
Hi Barbara!
Hahah, looks great! Thanks for the shout out.
In response to the content, I’ll have to echo your “People are people” sentiment. I think too often there’s this false notion that social media (or online dating for that matter) is some kind of steroid for human connection. While the speed of messaging may have accelerated, our mental and physical ability to take in data, to read and adjust to social cues has only done so by a small fraction comparatively – This would be that noise you mentioned.
So, there’s still a very organic rhythm to genuinely speaking and listening, even online. Most of the personal coaching work I do now focuses on helping clients slow down, and for my marketing consulting, I find that I am educating leaders to recognize any promo campaign as a conversation, not a Times Square ad blasting your senses to bits. In a way, I see my role having a lot of parallels with that of a relationship coach, hahah.
It’s funny how we all have to be reminded to slow down and pay attention. Does this mean we’ve lost touch with our common sense or our better judgment?
Yes on the steroids! Oscar and I talk about this a lot, since I’ve been watching a lot more sports these days
Seriously though, in our Viagra culture, we still insist our athletes remain “pure” and “clean,” at the same time that the sports media and athletics industries demand unhuman things from them. So then the parallel here would be that as artists we’ve come to have very unrealistic expectations and no sound means to achieve?
Thoughts on Blogging, Engagement (and Google Plus). » The Wily Filipino
Hi Barbara!
First, it’s CRAZY that I haven’t met you (yet). Oh, and of course you know Gladys and Joanne! Beautiful amazing people always know beautiful amazing people! I’m happy you’re doing a reading at Bird and Beckett!!! I LOVE that bookshop!!
As for the blogsphere and having an ‘online presence’, for art folks, it’s pretty inevitable having remnants of oneself all over the virtual world (both for promotion and connection – nothing wrong with any of that). At first, my goal was to navigate people to my content but I started realizing I had to write for myself (always) and about the things I love because the people that matter will be the individuals reading it. You already pointed this out…
“having this blog be the space where I continue to process what needs processing, so I can continue to envision a project, write it to completion, see it through to publication and beyond”.
AGREED! This is why I keep a daily blog. It’s rough but I keep at it, even if I post a photo because I didn’t feel like writing that day, I do it!
Lastly, I believe monetization of blogs has affected peoples’ ideas and perceptions of blogs all together. Long ago, as your reflection states, blogging was fun with no pressure but throw in advertising, search engine analytics and ‘reader engagement’…well, not so fun anymore. One thing is certain. I follow blogs and engage WAY more with artists and writers I admire and want to foster connections with. In other words, I’m happy I’m finally leaving you a comment and not just admiring your work from afar…
You definitely inspire this writer…
i’m hoping for a twitter/fb-back-to-bloggin backlash…at some point, all of this brevity and short-attention-span-material leaves me feeling overloaded/overwhelmed…i find myself seeking out notices about blog-postings and using FB to find long articles my friends have found interesting…
i’ve come late to this appreciation for blogs… perhaps part of a strange new period in my life of feeling both isolated and community’d…i like the idea of “having this blog be the space where I continue to process what needs processing, so I can continue to envision a project, write it to completion, see it through to publication and beyond.”
i used to journal daily and have friends i could meet in person that i could talk to for hours….life doesn’t allow long hours at coffee shops anymore, much less allow for long hours talking…but the processing still has to happen and some part of that in a semi-public space….
i’m afraid that if i blogged i would become too concerned w/ all the numbers you mentioned above…i already find myself tracking website visitor #’s and counting ‘likes’ and comments on FB…it makes me sad to think that you’d become dispirited because of lower visitor #’s or lack of comments…
perhaps it’s time to think of blogs as a different sort of thing…a record of our thoughts, our processes….in a way, your ‘papers’ as a writer…which i know sounds much more solitary than how you described what blogging used to feel like…made me homesick for it and i never experienced it…
maybe that will push me towards a blog too–cause i’m pretty sure now that i’m going to have my journals torched and i would never, ever give my yahoo account over to an academic institution as i’ve seen several writer friends do recently…
all this to say, i hope you don’t get discouraged…we’re out here reading, maybe commenting erratically but definitely reflecting on your words…
The Challenges of Art Writing and Blogging | Dorothy Santos is…
It seems to me that these things sometimes run in cycles. I’m thinking of the early 1990′s when there was an upsurge (here in Minneapolis, and many places elsewhere) of open-mike readings. It was a pretty interesting scene for a couple of years, with a very loosely-shaped community of poets who showed up at any of the 15 or 20 weekly or monthly readings here. There were some people who showed up everywhere, others who popped in out of the blue and were never heard from again. I got to know several of the people reasonably well for a little while, and heard a lot of great poetry, and heard a lot of poetry that didn’t say much to me.
After a couple of years things leveled off somewhat, a few of the reading series died out, and the people who showed up at the readings started being the same people over and over, and it was still good, though there was a little less raw excitement going on.
And over the next two or three years what I started noticing was that many of the people who were really serious about the writing they were doing were not showing up much at the open mikes any more, they were instead holed up and hunkered down and writing. Eventually I also felt that the scene had run its course, and I pretty much stopped showing up.
This is not to say the creativity can’t happen at open mikes, or that it runs counter to serious effort, but just that with a finite number of hours in the day and week and month at some point people make choices.
I also sometimes miss the time of several years ago when the poet blog world was lively and hopping in a major way. It’s gotten quieter now, maybe, though also in a way more “hardcore” — it’s one thing to have been writing poetry for a couple of years, it’s another to still be writing it after 40 years.
I have no idea how many readers my blog has — I’m not trying to compete with the Huffington Post, on the other hand my vague sense is that there are at least a few more people reading it than I’m aware of. That seems enough for now.
Lyle, thanks for your thoughts here. Yes, things definitely work in cycles, and live as long as folks need them to, or find them useful. I think you might be right about blogging being more “hardcore,” which I think you mean, those who persist with it in a meaningful way really persist with it, and continue to feel its usefulness. I think that’s what you mean. I do know some folks for whom blogging did cease to be useful, and/or kept up with it even when it was no longer useful or meaningful, simply because they felt like they had to. And I think that’s where a lot of the stuff that doesn’t speak to me comes from – stuff written by folks going through the motions.