Responding is better than replying
The other day I posed a question on the Web that has (gladly) initiated a string of responses from people. And by that I do not mean comments on social media but entire blog posts. Before sharing a few thoughts on that and making it all meta (the good kind), here are links to all the responses (I know of) along with some quotes pulled out that I’d like to highlight.
First up, my response to my own question..: If I was born and brought up in the time of modern social media, would I even blog?
Jamie Thingelstad’s response included a good analogy of renting apartments versus owning your house to convey his point:
Having a blog is like having a single family home. Want to remodel? Okay. Want to play your stereo? Okay, within the noise ordinances. Want to change the way the living room is laid out? Fine, none of our business. This is why I have a blog. I want to have my own space, and do my own things, and not be under a landlord. That also means I have to mow my grass, tend to the rain gutters, and manage the upkeep. And just like houses some take more of that than others.
Incidentally, I’ve offered a similar analogy in an earlier article on “how to feel at home on the Internet”.
Then there’s Manu with an interesting take:
The vast majority of people on social media won’t move to blogging because what they get out of social media is not the same thing you get out of blogging. I think it’s a false equivalence.
Blogging is primarily a solitary, output-driven, activity. People have blogs because they want to share, they want to express their thoughts and feelings. Social media is instead driven by consumption. Sure, some people are power users and post 5000 times a day, but the vast majority of users are lurkers who just scroll their timelines, follow other people and their interactions are limited to likes and the occasional comment.
I think this dovetails with what I’ve long considered to be two separate challenges:
- Empower people to own their reading experience on the Web
- Enable them to write and share independently
People doing one may not need, or feel the need, for the other.
Hedy’s thoughts resonated for me:
I would write down my thoughts in what my friends back then would call the "essay format" and post those big walls of text instead. Pictures and media alone didn't appeal to me as a medium for expressing my thoughts a lot of the times. As I expected, barely anyone cared, and posts with media got the most engagement.
Naturally, I drifted away from posting to socials, using these platforms just for catching up with friends. I started to write elsewhere, and eventually turned to blogs.
Lucio said things I found funny—because it’s true for me too:
The reason why I do [blog] is, frankly, because I am a nerd with way too much free time on my hands who loves to put unnecessary amounts of effort into things I cannot put in my resume.
Well, true for me except for the free time part. After becoming a working adult, I have no clue how seven years have passed.
Matthew, a writer by choice, responded in another direction:
In a world where nothing really happens to you unless you’ve documented it for the entertainment of strangers, I would insist on an undocumented life.
Ava touched upon why many write:
I also wrote very very long texts all day long to online friends in direct messages or chats. It wasn't that I had seen it and emulated it, or was surrounded by an online culture normalizing it […]; it came from within me no matter what anyone else was doing. I used it as therapy, to get things off my chest, to get help and advice and sort my thoughts when help wasn't available in real life. So I think even if I was born later when the big socials already existed and favored short form content, I would still blog.
As someone who also prefers to write to sort out and structure my thoughts, I could relate with her approach.
Note again how these responses are entire blog posts and not micro comments or replies on my social media. You know what I love the most about them? Other than Manu, I didn’t know any of these people. And yet their responses are personal reflections. They have the momentum of thoughts gathered over days. It’s something you can never get with the transient nature of social media.
While these responses may be scattered across the Web, they are also independent and interconnected thanks to the Web itself. It’s like conversing on email but in public. Thank you to each of you who wrote and shared your thoughts. ☺️
I love talking in links. This is the way.