What's A Blog For
Because I am ruthlessly dedicated to compartmentalization, I have opted to launch a secondary personal blog to accompany my arguably-more-professional blog on my company's official website. This was prompted by the realization that a lot of the stuff I'd like to write at length about - longer thoughts about the Cohost closure, things about my personal life, media analysis, whatever - wouldn't exactly slot neatly into a semi-professionalized space. In general, the BP Games blog will be reserved for things relating to BP Games projects (reposting AAA essays/organizing a new issue, I want to restart the in-depth retrospective on Opportunity I abandoned, various development updates, etc) while everything else will go here. Also, I saw a bunch of my friends starting Bear blogs and frankly I really liked the vibe and got jealous.
With Cohost's closure mere days away, looming large in my mind are the benefits and deficiencies of the more traditional blogging model that so many of us leaving the site behind are moving towards, when compared to Social Media in general. I thought for this blog's first post I'd go over my thoughts on that.
Blogging Strengths
Exactness (Length)
Pretty self-explanatory. On a blog, you can say everything you want to say on a topic, structured exactly how you like, all in one go. You don't have to break your thoughts up into two dozen 300-character posts or reduce them down to a 60-second video script. Infinite nuance is yours.
Security
Generally speaking, as long as you aren't peppering your posts with compromising personal information, it is much harder for people to fuck with you on your own personal blog than on most forms of social media. It's not IMPOSSIBLE, of course, but it takes a lot more work - one of social media's greatest vectors of innovation is how it's reduced the cognitive load necessary to harass someone to trivial levels. Even sending someone a nasty e-mail is like five extra steps compared with sending them a tweet telling them to kill themselves. The reduced reach of personal blogs also works positively in this case - there's also lower likelihood of a personal blog crossing the timeline of someone whose idea of a good time is to get super shitty for no reason.
Customization
Again, pretty self-explanatory. Depending on your platform, you can jazz up your essays and longposts with different fonts, layouts, images, embeds, widgets, even little custom applets if you've got the programming savvy. While this will usually cost you a little money out of pocket, it's usually not much. Unrestrained self-expression feels pretty good!
No Spam/No Ads/No Doom
Or, rather, any spam, ads, or doom on your blog are entirely self-administered, making this TECHNICALLY a sub-facet of Customization. But seriously - on a blog, you're never going to find yourself accosted by someone you follow suddenly reposting three dozen posts worth of bullshit you don't care about. You aren't going to be subjected to advertisements for awful products and services every third post. And you aren't constantly being blasted with a firehose of the worst possible news from all corners of the Earth at all times, forever. This makes for a much calmer experience overall.
Accomplishment
One thing I discovered from my time on Cohost is that I LIKE having a Body Of Work. I really enjoy being able to look at a list of the long, thoughtful essays I wrote, re-read them, think about how my views might have changed since writing them (or, more frequently, marvel at how correct I still am about everything), and be able to present others with the same list. On so many other platforms, it's so easy to feel like even your best works become ephemeral in the blink of an eye.
Blogging Weaknesses
Reduced Spontaneity
You can't really just blast out a tiny blog post of a couple sentences in the same way you can make a tweet or a quick Tumblr post. Like, you COULD, but it's not the same. You can't really provide live commentary with a blog - you can write a stream-of-consciousness post while watching or listening to something live, but the final product is still going to be a single static object. And anyway, the audience isn't really going to interact with it live either.
Reduced Discoverability
How exactly do you acquire new readers for a blog (if that's what you want)? It's kind of a hodgepodge - Wordpress does have a global tag system. Bear has a Discover stream. Maybe you get lucky with your SEO? But, ironically, the best way to get new people to read your stuff is to post links to it to social media - which obviously limits one's ability to fully replace social media with blogging.
Reduced Feedback
People don't really comment on blogs the same way they might respond to tweets or Tumblr posts or Tiktoks - it's a much steeper climb to cultivating an audience that engages with your stuff that way. Unfortunately, the thing that makes harassment less likely - the increased cognitive load of doing so - also works against positive engagement. You also don't get the experience of getting a notification that someone has shared an old post of yours, thus generating a new wave of engagement on something you'd forgotten about. This makes for a much lonelier experience.
Pressure
Another thing that's been rattling around my head while considering all this are thoughts about the subtle (and less-subtle) pressures of blogging.
There's the pressure to create and entertain - it's a different beast than on traditional social media. On social media, you know that you're almost never going to be the ONLY account anyone is following, so if you go a while without producing anything it's not a big deal. But long silences on blogs can feel cavernous, echoing, embarrassing. You're a one-man show now.
There's also social pressure, specifically in regard to your blogging peers. This blog has a small list of links to other sites I'd like readers to check out, and you wouldn't believe the agony it was coming up with that list. A LOT of people from Cohost have started personal websites and blogs since the closure was announced. Many of them are my personal friends, others are acquaintances who I'm not personally close with but whose work I respect & enjoy. Who gets priority? Is it presumptuous of me to link to the site of someone I don't really know personally from a personal blog? Am I implying a more intimate relationship than actually exists? Am I implying I'm their peer? Do I have to include links to ALL of my friends' blogs? Is anyone going to feel slighted if I DON'T link to them? And that's not even getting into the idea of blogging rings or link roundups - how closely are people paying attention to how often I link to things of theirs? What's the etiquette for gaining access to a ring, anyways? Do I even want that? Do I want yet another obligation? Does anyone even care? Aaa
Final Thoughts
I should not let it go unsaid: Cohost represented a pretty perfect marriage of blogging with social media. No character limits, Markdown and CSS customization, public API, robust tagging system, robust personal security, no ads. The interface accommodated long posts and short posts in equal measure. There were other people there, and for the most part people behaved themselves. If you didn't feel like posting (or were too busy to post) you could just lurk and repost stuff and feel fine. I likely would not be indulging in this kind of qualitative assessment of blogging vs social media if Cohost were going to be still be around after next Tuesday. I feel more than a little like Billy Beane in Moneyball, trying to reconstruct in the aggregate what was an all-around Very Good Thing.
I'll have more to say about Cohost in coming posts - my experience on the site, my complicated feelings about the shutdown, my wholly-unsolicited two cents on what I'd personally have done differently. I think this blog will also make a good home for some of my old longposts that wouldn't have mapped well to the BP Games blog. I'm dreading the day after the shutdown, but in a way I wish it would get here faster - I want to get to figuring out what my life online looks like.
- Bigg