Stupid Blog Tricks

Blogs have really been pissing me off lately.

You might have noticed -- I'm sure all four of my regular readers caught on -- that my blog has been mostly disastered over the past few days. What happened was this: For some reason I had to repost a bunch of entries to my blog a bunch of times in a row. I forget why, but I had a good reason. Whatever it was, the sudden flurry of posting raised a flag at Blogger/Google HQ and they suspended NYC Art for being a spam blog or -- and don't you just love the way words get mangled on the Internet -- splog. Blooger helpfully supplies a link for you to get your flagged blog reviewed by a human in a bunker somewhere so it can be reinstated and you can publish to it again. What they don't note anywhere obvious is that the Blooger minions have been hopelessly backed up since last November, possibly because they're all employed in figuring out where everyone's 401(k)s went when the world economy evaporated.

I didn't worry about it too much until I'd spent a few days writing up my latest piece of staggering brilliant insight and wit. Then I had to do something about it because I had something to publish. So I began the long and painful process of ditching Blooger and moving my blog to another platform, one I control myself. I started with Movable Type because that's what I use over at The Incomparable thanks to my former TeeVee.org buddies. I couldn't get that to import Blogger posts, though, so I tried WordPress, but that wouldn't work either. Thus I went back to MT and got it to work, with a great deal of huffing, puffing, and SQL mangling.

Thanks, Blogger/Google! I really needed that!

Now you might at this point say that I'm being churlish in my anger with Blooger, since after all they provided me their blog software free of charge. And you're right, I guess. But you're also wrong. Because here's the thing: I provided them with content. Not a lot, maybe, and not really great content. But I added my tiny little share. And what is blog software without content? Nothing. Nothing at all. Neither Blogger nor Google would exist if not for my efforts added to the much better, much larger efforts of thousands upon thousands of other people. In fact if not for the very basic building blocks of content on the Web -- if not for motivated individuals like me beavering away for free on topics about which we senselessly care -- the World Wide Web wouldn't exist. Think of the cheapest, crappiest mobile phone plan in America: That's what the Internet would be like if not for millions of volunteers. Even that phone plan is just a little bit better because of the Web. So all of Google's zillions of dollars -- that giant bed of moolah on which Sergey Brin and Larry Page sleep -- all of it was made on my back and the backs of those like me.

So I think I can be allowed a little bit of anger at being screwed over this way. Thanks, Blooger!

In a way this is related very strongly to something else that's been pissing me off about blogs lately. Not long ago I stopped reading a certain blog (which shall remain nameless, as they say) because it occurred to me that just my presence there, my adding to the comments, lent that blog author legitimacy; and that fact was being ignored by that author. In fact they seemed to think they could accept that legitimacy while still treating us, the commenters, as disposable. They could moderate our comments and disallow things they didn't like, they could ignore inconvenient topics, they could turn us on and off at will, in fact -- all while maintaining a veneer of balance, of civilized discourse, of even-handedness. And they could be polite online and dismissive in person, could respond to public comments but not private e-mail messages, and so on. In short, the blog author could receive all of the benefits of their commenters' input, while deflecting anything negative that might also come with that.

Is that obtuse and hard to read? I'm trying so hard not to get into specifics, even of gender. Let me try to round it out a little better: If a writer has a popular blog with a lot of visitors and a lot of discussions in their comments, then that blog writer is getting a lot from their audience. Their stature is improved by the size and visibility of their audience. Their position as a writer is elevated by the discourse on their blog. They get up to the minute feedback on their writing -- both in terms of mechanics and abstract things like philosophy. The larger the audience and the more valuable the discussions, the more that reflects back on the blog writer.

And it seems to me the blog writer should then have responsibilities to their commenters. To their audience. A certain respect is required. An acknowledgment. The blog writer might have the hard job, but without the audience, the job is meaningless. And a blog commenter is so much more than a silent audience -- Stephen King's Constant Reader -- and I think they deserve concomitantly more respect and responsibility.

So when I comment on someone's blog, I take it seriously. Not that I think my contributions are so great or even better than anyone else's. Far from it. I think I'm often stupid and pointless. But even so, my comments are one very small part of that audience that gives a blog author back all of that important stuff -- prestige, feedback, energy. And so I want to be taken seriously.

I therefore find it upsetting when one of my favorite blog authors decides to shut down commenting on his blog. Or when another blogger whose site I've been frequenting decides to just delete his entire blog. Hey, some of that writing you deleted? It was mine! I deserve better than that. I've put time into your site, reading and composing comments and being your audience. I didn't do much, but I did do something.

My own blog isn't one that invites a lot of comments or builds a community. I don't know exactly what it is that does those things, but I don't have it. That's fine. I'm happy to be writing, to have a place to write, and to have the four or so regular readers I do. I don't really need more. But when I venture away from my own yard, I'd like to be treated a little better than I have been.

Lately that's left me looking at the list of blogs I frequent -- it's not a long list by any means -- and thinking about paring it down. I still have Anonymous Female Artist on there and neither she nor Nancy Baker has posted there in ages. But even setting aside a couple of dead blogs, I've got a bunch of sites I really don't need to visit any more. What for? Who the hell cares?

I know, all the bloggers out there are breathing a sigh of relief. "No more comments by that fucking moron Rywalt," they're saying. Right. Except you may not just be driving away me. You may be driving away your audience. And when they're gone, what will you have left?