Meme time

Phil has managed to put together an interesting little blog meme together, asking the following five questions:

1. the blogs you read regularly when you started blogging
2. the blogs you read regularly now
3. some blogs you’ve stopped reading (and why)
4. the blog you’ve started reading most recently
5. every blog you’ve ever contributed to

He has done a pretty good job answering his own questions, let’s see if I can do as well:

1 the blogs you read regularly when you started blogging: I became aware of blogs in 2000/2001 but was still mostly an Usenet person, as well as being on dailup rather than broadband. So the first blogs I read where by regulars fromt he science fiction newsgroups, like Avedon Carol or the Nielsen Haydens. This was just before the warbloggers took over the medium when it was still mainly nerds ‘n geeks that blogged, to me more a sideline to Usenet than a replacement. It was only a year later, as the great flood of rightwing assholes starting blogs about how we need to kill all the ragheads that I started Wis[s]e Words, as Usenet had become unusable and I needed somewhere to shout, rather than just at the telly. The booklog however had been going for a year already at that point, having been started in 2001 as a way of keeping track of everything I’d read. So it was mainly nerdy and booklogs I read, things like Boing Boing. This is the earliest existing snapshot of blogs I follwoed on the Internet Archive.

2 the blogs you read regularly now: I tried to regularly read all the blogs in the sidebar to the right, as well as those on my other blogs. Usually however I start at Unfogged, where the posts are dull but the threads are as Usenetty as everything you’d be likely to find these days, followed by Jamie, Roy and Aaronvitch Watch. These four I hit up first thing in the morning everyday, as they usually all have something new every day that’s interesting, funny and easy to digest. Phil himself is somebody I regularly check as well, but is one of those bloggers you have patience for, but if there’s something there it’s always a treat. Then there’s James, the various comics bloggers, the more serious political bloggers and depending how dull the day is, I go through the entire blogroll.

3 some blogs you’ve stopped reading (and why): quite a few blogs I’ve stopped following through the years. Some just stopped blogging, like Justin, but with a lot I just lost interest, either because a blog itself became boring, or more that I lost interest in a given category of blogs. Ditched the nerdy blogs, the “readable rightwingers”, the techy blogs, added more socialists, and so on. Since Obama’s election it has been the American socalled liberal blogs that have become utterly dull, either hegemonised into the Democratic Party mainstream, or just so demoralised by the amazing revelation that Barack Obama is not quite the second coming of FDR they’ve become boring in their hatred. Some of the more mainstream political English blogs may go the same way, as the new political realities hit home.

But the blog I miss the most didn’t end because the blogger lost interest or that I lost interest, but because he killed himself. I’m talking about Aaron Hawkins, the self styled Uppity Negro who was geeky, smart, wickedly funny, incredibly good at getting at the not so hidden racist within each warblogger, overall perhaps the best blogger I’ve ever read, but it wasn’t enough. On September 3, 2004 he committed suicide. Almost six years ago now, I still miss him.

4 the blog you’ve started reading most recently: let’s make that three. First, K-Punk, socialist theory made interesting and even a bit cool. Then there’s Indistinguishable from Magic, all about how one particular person thinks about comics and creating comics, which is always been the sort of thing I like. Finally, Gin and Tacos, a sarky and sane look at US politics, one of the few American politics orientated blogs still worth reading.

5 every blog you’ve ever contributed to: quite a few. My Booklog is the oldest, started in 2001. This was followed on March 7 2002 with this one, Wis[s]e Words, as an outlet for political and other frustrations. Prog Gold was set up on November 1, 2002, back when I still thought blogs could change the world and I could harness their power. Intended to be something like what Daily Kos is now, a central clearinghouse for the “progressive blogosphere” it has since mutated into a two person groupblog, though with S. still in hospital even this is not true at the moment. When she was blogging, it always got more hits than Wis[s]e Words ever did.

Inbetween those two I also started Linkse Gedachten, een Dutch language blog and contributed occasionally to American Samizdat. I won’t even mention the Livejournal, mainly kept to be able to comment on other people’s journals…

So…. Your turn?