Of course it hasn't jumped the shark!

On an unrelated note, I'd like to announce that I've just discovered a long lost cute 9-year-old cousin named Oliver, who will be guest blogging from now on at The Truth Laid Bear...

Jumped the shark? I don't think so. But I think perhaps just like when humans try to incorporate any new technology there will be periods of growing pains as they figure out how to use it without hurting themselves. I wonder how long it took humans to learn enough about the properties of fire, for instance, before they figured out how to grill a good steak without burning the damn place down. (Holy shit do I sound like an anthropologist or what? Wait, there's more...)
Humans are used to taking in many different sorts of cues during the course of communication. We've got visual: eye contact, body movements, facial expression; and verbal: tone, inflection, pace and synchronization of speech - plus hundreds more, all which give important cues as to what's actually being communicated.
On the internet, you don't have any of that. You just have typed - not even written - words. Basically, the margin for error is exponentially higher with this sort of communication. On top of that, blogs are all about people communicating ideas they're passionate about in a medium that doesn't lend itself to the translation of emotion.
Misunderstandings unsue, feelings get hurt, people feel overtaxed from the need to defend themselves because they said something that probably would have been correctly understood it had it been communicated face to face. And it keeps spiraling. And plus, there's an anonymous element to this that eases people's inhibitions which results sometimes in people just being fucking rude. I know I've been guilty of that - I've written something and then thought - too late, "what'd I say that for? I NEVER would have been so rude to someone I knew!"
The upshot of my rambling? I think people will go through periods of time when they're tired of all the unnecessary drama (I know I've thought, "holy crap I don't even have enough time to get this mad at someone I actually KNOW and see everyday, let alone someone I'll probably never meet!") and they tune back into their 'real' lives. But I think people will eventually adapt to the new medium and it'll find its place.

"Jumped the Shark?"
Yes.
The new medium? Streaming Internet radio, baby!
...once again, InDC, ahead of the curve.

ps evil?, maybe, but I'll take Coulter over Franken and Moore and day.

willow -

That's a very bright comment about internet semiotics (actually hermeneutics), but a couple of things -

1. You are describing burnout from internet socialization. I'm sort of asking if blogging has jumped the shark or whether this is just a personal feeling, specifically that the old standard of culling news and providing quick analysis has me bored to tears. Perhaps I should have said "blogging as we know it." Hell, even politics has me bored to tears.

2. Your communication comments are insightful, but I have to disagree with you on one point - I highly doubt that humans en masse will learn how to communicate emotion on the internet with the same tact that we draw upon in real life, all conditions remaining relatively static.

Personally? I've thought about instituting a reading comprehension qualification test to access this blog. If you pass the reading comprehension portion of a random set of SAT questions (say 'pass' is the 75th percentile), you get a password.

I answered the last one seriously without realizing the subtext... is this something from yesterday's show that my limited attention span missed?

Yeah, my SAT and GRE scores were nothin' to brag about either. I hate tests.

No subtext. I'm just asking about blogging, because the old style of blogging is boring the hell out of me.

I'll make an SAT exception for you, tee bee.

Oh, I don't think humans - en masse - will learn how to communicate emotion on the internet with the same tact we draw upon in real life, either. Hell, most of 'em don't do that well face to face. But more will develop those skills. And when I said that blogging will find its place in the communications scheme of things I didn't necessarily mean it would be a big place.

I think it MIGHT be a personal feeling, this 'end of blogging as we know it' but without further definition of that, it's hard to say with certainty. There seems to be quite of bit still going on. One thing's for sure, the beauty of blogging is that if you're bored to tears with political analysis, you are free to do something else. And I can't say I blame you for being bored - the election is a tough act to follow. I mean - who else that's in the news lends themselves to having a Hummel caricature drawn of them? Or a side by side "rawhide" spoof? That shit was classic man, classic.

Fat kid says.... yep.

Well, a few people I talk with - okay, the one person I talk with about blogging - did agree that things have sort of lost their fizzle. Which sucks for me, because I just jumped the shark from commentor to blogger. Seems like somewhere around or just before tax day people phoned in most of their stuff, with one or two interesting posts.

And dayum, I just read the "that's all" string at Jeff G's. I feel for you both - sometimes comments should be shut down because of vitriol, but comments often help make a blog a stronger read. I know I would shut that crap down in a heartbeat, while feeling like I should leave it up so people can see for themselves the crap and the crapweasels. But shut it down I would [channeling Yoda - the pyschosis seems to be kicking in again].

Of course, that's if anybody but you and a few friends and post subjects ever commented. Maybe it's good to be a tiny, invisible microbe in a vast ocean. Not sure my skin will ever be that thick. With dentricles. So we get back to the "shark" idea of your post. Which I would say I hope is just a hiccup, and the universe is prepping that next big dogfight.

PS I think blogging for some of we thin-skinned folks is changing; I'm semi-self-conscious about what I write, because I don't mean to offend. For example, that joke piece I did never got comment from Rusty, and now I wonder if he didn't think it was funny and is sorta pissed at my insensitivity to his daughter being sick and him being scared about it. Or maybe that's just me anyway. But the best discussions are often provocative, so will I never really engage readers by being cautious?

Sorry if that's too much navel-gazing. It kind of bugged me what people were willing to say on that string... not that it's confined to that post. But you know.

Of course, that's if anybody but you and a few friends and post subjects ever commented. Maybe it's good to be a tiny, invisible microbe in a vast ocean.

It is. This blog has gone from insignificance to rather large numbers prior to the election, and back to relative obscurity, and the comments reflect that. And I like it. It was very unpleasant dealing with the negative feedback when you have 15-20,000 readers per day, which is why most blogs get rid of comments or start registration in that number range.

And unless you're trying to change the world, it's much more pleasurable when it's small and light. Plus, you can swear and post pictures of llamas screwing and not care about what your large audience thinks.

Well, popularity of a certain sort comes and goes; a lot of yours I thought was driven by the llama pics - ha. I don't know from hits, but INDC Journal looks pretty well-trafficked while still being a place where you can comment and have a chance of being heard. So, party on dude.

I already have other thoughts on the whole change the world thing, but I gotta go grade papers and hand them out to happy students. If it seems worth commenting about later, I'll do that. ciao, bella.

Blogging hasn't jumped the shark.

It's climbed aboard an Evel Knievel motorcycle, set itself on fire, and jumped twenty-three Greyhound busses filled with sharks.

I like blogs. I like you, Bill. But the blogosphere as a whole takes itself way, way too seriously, and imagines it has way, way more influence than it does.

no, i don't think blogging has jumped the shark. i do, however, think it's in a bit of a recession. my guess is that it has a lot to do with lack of compelling subject matter. until now, we've had 9/11 and elections and wars to keep people motivated to publish and read blogs. those things are sort of fading into the woodwork now, and people have pretty much said all there is to say about them. blogging is just in a bit of a quiet cycle until the "next big thing" comes along.

But the blogosphere as a whole takes itself way, way too seriously, and imagines it has way, way more influence than it does.

I both agree and disagree. For example, and this isn't self-serving analysis (though it gels nicely with the theory), blogs had a tremendous impact on the national debate prior to the election. They were the market-induced steam valve that let suppressed info out past the traditional gatekeepers.

That being said, so many bloggers take themselves and the medium WAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too seriously, and it's pretty laughable/annoying, at times. So yeah, posturing as the vanguard of the future is pretty tired.

IMO

I coach little league, but this year I'm not having any fun, and I really think I'm going to hang up the spikes after this season.

Has Little League Baseball jumped the shark?

The intensity of last year couldn't continue. You had a critical election & an ongoing war, & the MSM clearly had an agenda in both cases. Partly from ideology, partly from the nature of the beast: bombs play better than new schools, it's fun to 'get' an incumbent.

But that's over, the Republicans are in control, & I for one am not that interested in the daily political news. Also the Schiavo mess showed that right bloggers could be as unhinged as left bloggers.

The original bloggers were very vanilla, just linking to news items. At its worst, this amounts to post after post of 1) link 2) shriek shriek 3) comments. But the medium is very malleable. Ghost & Sondra & Michele & Goldstein are all doing different things but they're idiosyncratic. And then there's the competition: if Gawker can do it better, why should people read us?

Wonkette is very smart, she got a good gig, looked around, saw there was no future in blogging, got a publicist, raised her profile by doing TV gigs, & ended up with a book deal for an unwritten novel (almost unheard of & unlikely to be repeated).

I just try to entertain myself

Phil Smith -

That's an excellent take on it (giving the benefit that you're not being a totally sarcastic jerk), the exact thing that I'm wondering. Whether it's just my perception, or whether the medium as a whole is in the doldrums. Could be just me, could be a wee bit of both. Dunno.

I will say that the same format of news analysis seems a bit stale.

jeffp -

Very good comment, I agree.

Two things:

(1) This pretty much proves the shark has been jumped. Once Ted McGinley is in, it's over.

(2) Seriously - I think I can't answer your quesiton because "blogging" is too big a spectrum. Is photo-bloggin over? I dunno - don't read 'em. Is celebrity-gossip blogging over? Ditto. Same for gee-my-navel-looked-kinda funny-while-I-had=Cheerios personal blogging.

I read mostly political blogs, and I have to admit, it can getting kinda dull pretty much knowing what the blogger is going to say in advance. Some people (e.g., Willis/Powerline) are so reliabily partisan that I get bored much more quickly than I used to.

That said, part of the reason I enjoy reading you 'n' Protein Wisdom is because you're different,/i> in a good way - I know I'm gonna find something that may be weird, but is not predictable.

Unrelated: how much of Wonkette's novel will AMC actually write? No publisher these days is going to throw money down the toilet on an unwritten novel by a non-novelist without a clear understanding that if they don't like it, they'll 'fix' it. Her job is to sell it by sex & innuendo

Do I sound bitter?

Sounds like you're burning out, Bill. Perhaps a retargeting ot your blog's content is in order?

I burn out very quickly on reading political blogs, which is why I don't write one. (I tried, twice. Had me bored to tears within days.)

My own blog's numbers keep increasing. I write about insignificant crap. But, hey, it keeps me and 500 to 1,000 others entertained.

Treacher pretty effectively described what's gotten tired.

This is just a medium that can be used to deliver any content. The content's stale, the medium's still effective.

Have legal thrillers jumped the shark? Yeah, about ten years ago. But books are still OK.

All good comments.

I still think about the amazing and unlimited of a blog - like writing a novel online, for example - but I'm a bit tired of the format of political blogging.

Do I sound bitter? Jaded, maybe. Because you're right - AMC isn't getting a deal that isn't available to anyone else. I'll be surprised if I ever see a book on the shelves with her name on it.

Brett, when will you have the video file available for download on the Evel Knievel blog stunt? I want to see that.

The change I've noticed that hasn't receded is that I check the news, then I check the blogs for reaction, analysis and breadth. I'm not newly critical of MSM reporting, I'm interested in it more than I have been because now I have a check system that makes it relevant.

The hard thing is the stimilus that's changed. There was a high level of conversational back-and-forth, and now I feel like there's a dearth of talking sparked by blog posts. Must be my SAT score meeting blogging's 7th-grade reading level. But I miss some of the talk. /ADHD potpourri

Actually, I was being a sarcastic jerk, but not totally (see, I never read Catalano, but I got the joke immediately -- birds of a feather). I was also trying to make a point, and I think it got across.

I think it's your perception, but not JUST your perception. Even though your quantity has dropped off, I still check this blog first every single day. I think that what has happened to lots of bloggers, as others have pointed out in a different way, is that things were a lot hotter before November -- there was so much to talk about that lots of you were really burning the candle at both ends. People can do that when the work is as engaging as it was, but it would be difficult to maintain that level of output when there just plain old ain't as much raw material. When you think about it, lots of you were producing output that was not only higher quality, but in larger quantities than the seasoned professionals. I'd bet that Krauthammer or Krugman or whoever you want to name would get pretty toasted after a run like last fall's. And just like with my baseball team, you don't get a salary, you take time away from your primary income-generating activities, and you still have a household to deal with.

The feedback mechanisms are suspect, as well. I've got parents who can go from #1 Fan to snarling jackasses over one managerial decision (happened last night, in fact), you've got readers who can blow up over one opinion. Hard to maintain perspective when that happens. I could be the best coach in the world, and the game's score is still almost entirely outside my control. Your revenues and traffic, even when you're at your best, are also pretty much outside your control.

I thought the show yesterday was excellent, by the way.

Thanks. Your comments about the quantity and effort last fall are 100% spot-on. Between work and blogging, it was 15 hour+ days, but the sense of purpose was very strong.

"The World is Flat" demonstrates the author's canny grasp of the obvious.

Thomas Friedman wears the Mustache of Understanding.

You've read the book, then?

The question's kind of broad, isn't it?

I read a post not long ago where an early blogger said blogging jumped the shark in '95. To him we're all Cousin Olivers. That's his opinion.

It's just a medium and it's all what you bring to it, make of it, or take out of it.
The things I like or dislike about blogs in general haven't changed.

The only differences I've noticed is there are more and more ads.

Oh, and there's now a Blogger Anthem.

Well, in the comments we've narrowed it down a bit to rote political blogging. And I'm interested in a broad spectrum of answers.

That anthem is awesome.

In that case, I wouldn't know. I skip straight political blogs.

Yeah, it's a good anthem.

"Narrowing" it down to political blogging is exactly the point the MSM doesn't get and which the 'sphere does.
One of the things that differentiates the two is the MSM's insistence on pigeonholing outlets to meet certain market objectives. A print venture needs a business model objective that the credit guy at Bank of America can relate to, or that fit in with the VP of Marketing's professional worldview. But the media corsairs of the blogosphere need no such demands, ergo, there is no "political" blog or "humor" blog--these labels can be ignored by bloggers-if not for veracity's sake at least for the simple truth that blogs, primarily, reflect the author's personality: one in which an interest in politics comfortably mixes with humor items. Blogs are not insular media outlets which we, in passivity, mutely internalize-they are less college lectures and more cocktail party discussions.
Which oblique rambling leads me to my point--the one thumbprint defining blogs for me is not the speed with which items can be dissected or debated, nor is it the myriad editors-in-waiting that can check and double check a claim (or memo), it is the fact that in large measure blogs are contributory.
They are communal.
They are a dialogue.
No other medium allows voices to be heard so accomodatingly.
And certainly, Bill, you do the heavy lifting, but I think the 'sphere has attracted so many because so many can lend their minds and talents to a larger, immediate project.
That being said, if you want time off, who am I to disagree!? Allah thought the despondence you feel would doom a lot of blogs, and you certainly
deserve a break.
But blogs will not disappear because their news day temporarily slows, but will persevere because we all like the project--the collaboration, excitement and belief that this is important.

..oh, and for the hot Llama action.

Notice also the big bloggers starting to take themselves awfully seriously. I mean, they're just bloggers. They're completely parasitical on the MSM, which at least generates its own material

The fun thing about the blogosphere was the guerilla DIY attitude. We need more of that & less pomposity. You know who I mean

*You've read the book, then?*

nope, caught several reviews and Friedman's obligatory "Receiving of the Oral Ministrations of Pleasure" by Charlie Rose.

I like it when Friedman hunkers down on television, drops his head slightly, peers at his host, raises his hands palms-level to the table and basically lets his mother&the folks back home know he's now a big leaguer whilst his mustachioed lip twitches.

seriously, Friedman seems a day late and a dollar short in his coverage- but then he's in the MSM and they miss everything by eight months to a year or more. "The World is Flat" ain't no scoop, although he treats it as one.

I can’t say I’m surprised at a bit of burn out on politics....it is the quiet period after an election after all. I can also see what people are saying about predictability. No one is going to be surprised by the views at Willis or Powerline the tenth time they go there.

Bill, your idea of an online novel sounds like a refreshing change. Would have to be episodic, like Dickens of some of the pulp magazines of the 40s and 50s, need a cliff hanger at the end of each section, so as to bring back the readers. I look forward to reading it....you’ve done some spoof stuff before, you’ve obviously got the ability so why not try it?