Question for the audience: Do you tell people you blog?
I was reflecting on this recently, after I inadvertently mentioned to a colleague that I had blogged about a topic a few days earlier. That, of course, started the questioning from them: Oh, what’s it called? What do you write about? Can I see it?
This one’s been doing the rounds recently, and I’ve enjoyed seeing responses from RNotte, Kev, Alex, and others (there’s a longer list on David’s post).
I feel like my answer is different from those of many other participants: I’ve traditionally made no effort to keep my cyberspace and meatspace separate: probably everybody in my “offline” day-to-day life knows that I write here, and my “online” identity centres around the same central point too.
But lately, I’ve leaned harder on talking about it online. Most of my real-world friends had blogs at some point, but virtually all of those have also long-ago abandoned them1, and along with that shift has come a disinterest in blogging and what it is (or can be) as well. Based on WhatsApp groups we share, most are happier reposting Facebook memes than sharing their own original thoughts in any kind of public forum.
(That said, it made my day when my friend Ele commented a couple of months ago. Hi, Ele!)
Anyway: I think that few would disagree that within popular culture, blogging has “had it’s day”. That’s not to say that there aren’t a great (and growing!) number of blogs out there: just that it’s not the popular touchstone that it was twenty years ago: data-harvesting social media silos have tragically become the “norm”, and for a blogger whose interest was targetting a specific audience… they need to go where the audience went.
Which I guess is something Kev was adjacent to when he said:
I tend to say “I enjoy writing” rather than “I have a blog.” And I think that’s because of the negative connotations blogging has with the general public.
I think some people tend to put “bloggers” in the same bucket as influencers, or podcasters. Which isn’t the case – many of us bloggers have no aspirations of influencing anything, we just like to share out thoughts on a medium we control.
This is the essence of it, I think. Blogging began as a way for people to write about… whatever they liked. But before long it also became a vehicle for marketing: “influencer bloggers” appeared and, let’s face it, made a bad name of it by making the popular expectation be that blogging is something you would do to make a living, rather than for the love of it. I’m not entirely surprised that so many people dropped blogging as a hobby rather than be clumped-in with them.2
But those same people had to jump platforms when social media silos became “the way” to advertise to a large audience, so now they’re all on Instagram, TikTok, and the like. The real personal bloggers – the ones who do it because blogging itself is the right medium for what they want to do – are still here. And, indeed, it feels like they’re in resurgence. Blogs are coming back, baby!3
The question was, though: who do I tell that I blog? And the answer is: absolutely anybody and everybody. But I mostly only make “subscribers” (a term I don’t terribly-much like, because it feels like it implies that increasing that number is some kind of “goal”) out of cyberspace friends, not meatspace friends, these days, I think.
But just sometimes, the worlds collide and somebody I see on the school run will talk about finding something of mine online, or somebody I meet through work will say that they read something I wrote, once. I enjoy these strange organic connections, but it can feel a little weird and awkward to be “recognised” unexpectedly.4
Footnotes
1 I’m pretty sad about it, honestly! I miss seeing blog posts from people I know in “the real world”; I see some, but not many.
2 It’s still a thing, of course, and I get countless requests for paid guest posts, ad placements, participation in link farming, and the like. And I’ve even had people ask me in person how I “monetise” my blog, as if making money from it was ever the goal!
3 Although probably never to the point where people will write about it as an up-and-coming phenomenon in a national newspaper, again. I think we’re past that stage.
4 Unexpected recognition also happens as a result of my work on FreeDeedPoll.org.uk and Three Rings, but these tend to be slightly easier to predict depending on the space I’m in. There are still surprise moments, though, and they’re still sometimes awkward at first!
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