This week, Shelley of Burningbird has been blogging for two years. To commemorate this, she provided a little history of her blog, doing the usual musing one does at those events, in the course of which she wrote this:
Remember Tubby the Cat? The quizzes? Googlewhacking? Those were the days, weren’t they? All of a sudden now, weblogging is News. Capital ‘N’ news. Serious stuff.
For instance, NBC news just had a story tonight on warblogs. They did a Google search on the term ‘warblog’ and mentioned that over 300,000 entries show up. They showed the Google results, and PapaScott, you showed up in the results! Did you know you were on national US TV tonight?
Before it was cats. Now it’s war. I’m not sure this is an improvement. The intimate little party, the golden age when we could write unemcumbered by the real world is over. Knock, knock. The world wants in.
I can understand where Shelley’s coming from, but I think she’s wrong here. Has it ever been possible to “write unemcumbered by the real world”, without shutting your eyes to it? I never had this golden age, as the weblogs I followed from the beginning were all too involved with the real world of politics and war, as my own are too. What’s happening now is not new; though it is certainly more pervasive.
Apart from that, happy anniversary, Burningbird and I wish I had known you earlier.