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Blog deaths and name-checking
December 09, 2006
This week’s round of link checking revealed a cover story in the Las Vegas Weekly with my name in it. The piece is kind of eulogy for the blogosphere, but we’ll get to that in a minute. First, the name-checking: ” Bl-gs will continue to exist, of course. I’ll continue to post in mine, and my serious bl-gger friends… will no doubt continue to preach to the political choir of our choosing, share happy hour tips or make verbal offerings to the altars of Warren Ellis and Audacia Ray.”
This had me giggling a lot this week and saying things to my boyfriend like, “Oh yeah baby, make offerings to my altar.”
Ok, that’s done with - and now, the meat of the article. The gist is basically that the writer, Geoff Carter, believes that the heyday of blogging culture is over and that the importance of the blog is in decline in no small part due to the rise of other forms of social networking and user-generated content like MySpace, podcasting and the explosion of YouTube and other similar video-uploading services. I definitely agree with him on a lot of his points, but I think this stuff is very different for sex bloggers.
I think that sex blogs will continue to exist in similar numbers that they have been cropping up over the past few years, and that they won’t be replaced by various forms of multimedia, for a variety of reasons. Many sex bloggers are women, and from the research I’ve been doing for my book, it seems that many women who start sex blogs do so as a way of finding their sexual voice. Some say and describe things on their sex blogs that may previously (and may still) have made them very pink in the face to say out loud to another person. Though of course sex blogging is a very public process, often more public than writers realize until they are discovered by someone who they really don’t want reading them, the act of writing is a very private, introspective act. Though sex blogging may for some be a stepping stone to wrangling with other kinds of media in a sexy way, often it is not because blogging is a relatively safe space, and one that (whether this is actually true or not) feels more anonymous than having your voice or your image floating around on the internet.
Just as important as this is the fact that sex blogging is much more discreet than other kinds of media-making. To blog, you don’t need anything other than your computer, and you can do it from anywhere. To podcast or to vlog, you need more stuff, and this stuff is both expensive and conspicuous. A good number of people who write blogs do so in secret, and its tougher to explain a pile of audio visual equipment than it is to explain a slavish devotion to sitting in front of one’s computer. Furthermore, some secret bloggers keep their blogs secret from their live-in partners - a live-in partner would make it pretty challenging to record sexy audio and video missives - a quick click to reduce your browser window to nothing just wouldn’t cut it if you were wearing a headset and microphone or have a video camera pointed at your naked body.
So maybe other blogs will go away, but sex bloggers will probably continue to sit tight in our little sex ghetto corner of the internet, spinning (sometimes tall) tales of exploits and desires.
Posted by Dacia at December 9, 2006 01:08 PM
Comments
Well said!
I had come to some of the same conclusions on my own concerning the state of blogging today.
From my own experience, I would agree with you point for point on your list of motivations for blogging, the reasons for remaining text-only, and the ability to create and post, discreetly, from nearly anywhere.
Nail on the head.
Posted by: Soulless Breedlove at December 9, 2006 06:36 PM
Dacia thankyou, my sentiments entirely. A blog so closely resembles a journal in ways that vlogs, podcasts and such never can. I have considered podcasting but given that our voice is as unique as our fingerprint, I choose not to have that kind of exposure.
There is something in the act of writing that I doubt other media could capture. Our ‘little sex ghetto’ nurtures a different kind of expression, a subtlety unique to writing. A strength comes from that investment.
Best,
Magdelena
Posted by: Magdelena at December 9, 2006 08:59 PM
I love our little ghetto corner of the ‘net. It’s quite beautiful over here.
Posted by: alwaysarousedgirl at December 9, 2006 10:16 PM
Blogging is an entirely different beast from MySpace, podcasting and YouTube. Saying blogging culture is dead reminds me of how I so often heard the refrain ‘print is dead’ with the advent of the web.
Maybe blogging will no longer attract people who set up a blog as a way to meet other people - MySpace is better suited to that. Blogging will however, continue to function as a very public place for people to find their voices through their writing - including but beyond the ‘sex ghetto’ as well.
Posted by: mister_pj at December 10, 2006 09:47 AM
Just goes to show you…if you practice prudence and patience, then all those formerly unwelcome bridge & tunnel trendoid hipsters will vacate the bar in search for the next “hot” spot to claim their own before the cultural zeitgeist pimps it to death…and the ones who stay will be the company you wanted to keep and be around from the git-go…
No offense meant to any bridge & tunnel trendoid hipsters in the crowd here!
Posted by: Irezumi Kiss at December 10, 2006 03:31 PM
It seems like there’s always someone out there writing about “the death of this” or “the end of that.” I say, fuck ‘em. What do they know. They’re wrong more often than they’re right - plus that kind of cynical bullshit is just depressing to read.
And anyway, you are spot on about sex bloggers. I think people make the same mistake when talking about blogging that they do when talking about porn - neither is a monolith. There’s simply too much variation out there to make grandiose, over-arching statements about all of it.
Posted by: Amber at December 11, 2006 11:04 AM
This is the problem I have had, for months! I adore V blogging but I do worry about security. I really, really want to take sex workers, addicts and other infamous genre into the current media - the more exposure the better. So why hide?
I am supplementing my new blog with you tube video and I seriously urge you to consider this - I know it’s a big step but remember when writing a blog was the most audacious thing you had ever done?
Things evolve, and so must we. Your thoughts welcome.
We should have a forum or something to discuss these issues.
Heroine/girl (p.s can you change my link to reflect my return back to blogger? most appreciated!)
Posted by: heroine/girl at December 12, 2006 10:16 AM
