A Curmudgeonly, Contradictory and Largely Pointless Post About Blogging

The launch of Dale & Co managed to provoke a hearty sigh of apathy from me. It’s not that I hold Dale or any of his writers in particular contempt; it is more about the fact that we just do not need another blog, let alone another mega-blog. The truth is that the blogging world long ago reached saturation point, and adding to it makes bugger all difference. There are already hundreds, if not thousands, of voices (my own included) chuntering away to tiny audiences who often only pay the minimal amount of attention possible to the output of their chosen blogs; bringing a load of those voices together doesn’t really increase the chances of those voices being hear – it just means that there is one site to pay fleeting attention to rather than several.

Part of the problem is a lack of perspective from those involved in the blogging world. Dale, for example, is a big man in a tiny pond. Those who blog will have heard about him; those who don’t probably won’t, unless they have a really anal memory for the anodyne talking heads who appear on the news on occasion to discuss the latest political developments. And what impact has perhaps the most famous blogger, Guido Fawkes, actually achieved? The resignation of Damian McBride and the temporary resignation of Peter Hain. Yeah, arguably good work, but it is hardly the dawn of a brave new world now, is it?

I do understand that some of the mega-blogs have been created, in part, to allow writers feeling blogging fatigue (and who wouldn’t feel that after years of churning out the same sort of warnings about the loss of freedom in this country only to be ignored by all and sundry?) to have the pressure of producing daily posts lessened through sharing that burden with others. But that doesn’t change the fact that blogs remain on the periphery of political life in this country.

Of course, this sort of slightly bitter and weary post does raise the question of why I continue to blog given I basically see it as pointless*. And I struggle to answer that question effectively, other than to say that this blog is a mix of me thinking aloud and down to the fact that I like to write. The fact that a few people choose to read my ramblings and occasionally comment on them is a source of constant surprise to me. But I am very aware that what I write here is largely missives into an abyss, and that would not really change if I chose to write again for a mega-blog.

So I’m not saying that people shouldn’t blog, or that they shouldn’t combine their efforts in the hope of making blogging easier and raising the profile of their writing. All I would say is that something like the launch of Dale & Co may seem like a big deal in the incestuous, inward looking blogging world actually means remarkably little outside in our wider society.

*The day will come, sooner or later, when I will stop, and the lights will go out here for good. We’re not quite there yet, but the Appalling Strangeness is not a project with an indefinite shelf life.