Feb. 18, 2016 - 5:22 a.m.

Pressed For Words

One thing I've noticed over the last year is the increasing number of people returning to blog here. It seems like every day there's a name I don't recognize in the "Recent Public Entries" box there on the right, and when I click on it the first sentence I read is "Wow, I can't believe I remembered my old password!"

It's nothing like the Good Olde Days of D-Land, certainly, when there were seemingly thousands of new posts added per day, hundreds of Diary Rings all humming with activity, certain bloggers EVERYONE knew (I was thrilled, thrilled, the day I got a note from Uncle Bob), and often so many comments in your Notes section that you didn't have time to respond to them all. But it's definitely less moribund than it was 3 or 4 years ago.

I started posting here when the word "blogosphere" was common, and accurately described the sheer size of the community. There were blogging conventions where people from all over the world would show up, presentations were made, and everyone was excited to see some of their favorite authors in the flesh. Before "viral" began to pretty much refer to only videos, popular posts here - text only posts - could shoot around the global interwebs at the same speed, and with the same effect. I was lucky enough to have one of my own entries go viral after Fark.com featured it one year, and I got something like 15,000 e-mails from all over the world within a week of it being posted. It was crazy.

Then came MySpace. With music and gaming features you couldn't get on any of the blogging platforms, it was a natural draw for younger people particularly. (In fact, it was such a draw that MySpace got more traffic than Google for a while.) There was an initial exodus from D-Land, but a lot of people also kept accounts at both locations so there wasn't a huge bleed-out. People would post an entry here and say "click my MySpace page for the video!". And we did.

Then came Facebook.

That was it. Diaryland met its Person from Porlock.

I don't have to tell you why.

Yes I do.

You're probably thinking "Facebook is more popular because it allows me to reconnect with people I once knew, keep connected to relatives I have no desire to interact with but am obliged to anyway, connect candies of the same color for hours on end, read deeply meaningful motivational posters, get insightful political commentary from my high school dropout cousin, and find out if my grandson really is a cross dresser finally."

That's all true. But they're not the reasons why people stopped blogging at Diaryland (and others) when they joined Facebook.

The real reason the blogging lemmings all went over the cliff is they discovered that Facebook takes less effort. And if history has taught us anything anything at all about human nature, it's that "less effort" is the Siren's call few can resist. (I was going to add "in America", but bloggers from all over the world jumped ship. We really are all brothers under the skin.)

I hear a "Well, DUH" rising from the collective readership. Of course it takes more time, energy, and thought to craft a compelling blog narrative than it does to type "Look what my cat thought was an appropriate bed! LOL!!!" under yet another picture of Fluffy sprawled out over a pile of dirty laundry. We all know that.

What surprises me though is that almost all the luminaries, the real Titans of Diaryland, the ones most applauded for being superb wordsmiths and master storytellers, the bloggers who seemed to take real joy in their ability to play with and manipulate the written word - like the aforementioned Uncle Bob - were among the first to depart. That they now apply their considerable talents to "Hit 'Like' if you think wine is the best way to get your daily serving of fruit!" is a literary loss perhaps only eclipsed by Samuel Taylor Coleridge having "Kubla Khan" curtailed by the original Person from Porlock.

However, as I said at the beginning of this overwrought bit of hand wringing, I'm starting to notice a trend in the opposite direction. People are coming from Facebook to Diaryland. Why? Well, if what many of them write in their "I'M BACK, BITCHES!" posts is to be believed, it's that they miss writing. Real, actual, writing. (A certain amount add they need a place to write where their 1,508 "friends" can't see it, also. Understandable, in this age of swift and violent retaliation to posts that don't conform to Internet Standards of Sensitivity to All Living Beings No Matter How Fat.)

Frankly, I am heartened by this trend.

Which is why I'm going to continue blogging here at Diaryland even though I've just set up a new blog at Word Press.

What?

What did he say?

Yeah, I know. I just completely diddled Diaryland until it came all over my hand, and now I'm announcing that I'm cheating on it. Waddup, dawg?

Here's the scoop:

I love Diaryland. I really do. Even after the, ah, "cost cutting measures" that saw things like the Comments feature going bye-bye, no new member sign-ups, etc., I still love it. I won't stop posting my silly, infantile, too-over-the-top-to-be-credible scribblings here, even if everyone else leaves and I'm the last one left to turn off the light and close the door behind me. I do this for me.

So why set up a mirror diary at Word Press?

In a word: pictures. I can post pictures at Word Press. As many as I like. For free.

I can post pictures here too, of course. But not as many as I like, and not for free. I've already reached my Gold Member limit, and since I'm not in a position at the moment to spring for Super Gold (or whatever it's called) to get more hosting space, I'm picture-less for the foreseeable future. But I want to post pictures.

It also is true that two long-time Diaryland pals of mine, Poola Girl and PoundHeadHere, both abandoned Diaryland several years ago and have been bugging the hell of of me to join them there. I've resisted because 1. I'm an idiot and can't figure out how to set up new blogs, and 2. I'm an idiot and can't figure out how to set up new blogs. But they finally bludgeoned me with their combined estrogen superpowers (and set up the blog for me), and so I relented.

And now I can post pictures.

Which means that in the future if I have an illustrative picture that needs to grace one of my posts, rather than write "imagine if you will..." I will instead ask you to click on my Word Press blog which will contain said illustrative picture.

Because that takes less effort than trying to describe it. And you know how I feel about using less effort....

(BTW, there are already a couple of test entries up that I did not bother cross-posting here. Including one titled "My Wife's Buns" that has PICTURES OF MY WIFE'S BUNS! Woo hoo! Check 'em out, bro. Yeah, I'm hittin' that....)

Ciao...but not Good Bye.

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