We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.

Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]

Bloggers! – The future belongs to us

I have placed my bets. I am now a blogger, and I intend to die a blogger.

And how will that work? “Today folks, I want to take another crack at the crisis in the Middle Ea………..UUUUURRRRRGHHHH!!!!” Crash. Head hits keyboard. Interestingly, funny random typing, thus – “;ldsrh;rg;gfmj’o;sarl’mj;gdvlklkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk” – is what you might then expect. But it turns out that if your head does hit the keyboard, almost or even absolutely nothing happens. Try it. Pressing random keys one at a time, monkey-Shakespeare style, gets you a mess of letters as above. Pressing just one key continuously gets you kkkkkkkkk, also as above. But pressing fifteen keys at once and holding them all down continuously while keeping the head motionless seems to achieve nothing.

Delete the above two paragraphs only if they crack immortality soon enough to include me, and if that happens I intend to blog for ever and ever. (And how might that work in the decades and centuries to come?!?!?)

What I’m saying is that I think blogging can only get bigger and better until it conquers the whole world and there are blogs everywhere about everything.

Samizdata’s readership seems to be creeping ever upwards. Yes there are numbers dips, which apparently afflict the whole blogosphere, but they are soon corrected and the underlying upward trend then resumes. People taking walks in the early summer sunshine after a war, like animals after they’ve been hybernating, for a few days, and such like. That’s all that is.

My reason for thinking that the blogophere is expanding is basically that, so far as I can see, it is. New blogs (thankyou Instapundit just when I needed you) are being started. Semi-sleeper blogs that have going a while are starting to really come alive. Long time scoffers give up the unequal fight, and start blogging as well (and yes there should be a link there alsol but I don’t know of a recent example – maybe commenters can chip in there). I really don’t think that this is CB radio. And these people certainly seem to agree with me. I wonder who they are.

But, question: Has anyone abandoned blogging with extreme prejudice? By this I mean not merely stopping because it is taking too much time, and the blogger has just got married, or has a life, or a job which he has to do constantly, or some such distraction, and blogging can’t be fitted in. I mean, has anyone given up blogging and gone out in a blaze of vituperation?:

Tata losers. The blogosphere is a great big crowd of self-abusive egomaniacs full of sound and fury, and achieving nothing. Blogging will never make big money, for anyone. It’s a total waste of time and brain cells. I’m out of here, and so should all of you be, you pea-brained fools. Get used to it. Nobody cares what you idiots think except you idiots. In 2013 you’ll be a joke on “We love 2003” and that’s all you’ll be. I’d tell you to drop dead, but I don’t have to, you will, and you won’t be replaced. Addios.

I made that up. But can anyone supply a genuine quote along those lines?

My impression is that the answer is no. No such proclamations have happened.

That doesn’t prove that people aren’t giving up blogging and thinking things like this. So maybe the above, or words to that effect, wouldn’t be their last blog posting, but would instead be an article for the mainstream media of the sort that the blogosphere can’t link to, containing also sentiments like this:

Buy a newspaper, you scumbag parasites. This took me two hours to write, and some guys paid me. So pay the guys. But, if one of you then scans all this into a blog, guess what, I don’t care, because nobody cares what you losers put in your loserblogs.

But as I say, I’m not hearing that. I think blogging is like telephones. Soon they’ll be everywhere.

But it’s the rest of my life I’m talking about, so if I’m wrong I need to be told.

6 comments to Bloggers! – The future belongs to us

  • n nmmj hycdev

    I just banged my forehead into the keyboard a bunch of times, and the above is the result.

  • I keep meaning to get back to my blog, but with work and homelife and doing tech support for my wife’s business and all, well – I haven’t posted since the Saddam’s statue fell.

    But I consider the blog on hiatus. I’ll be back!

  • I’ve considered giving mine up somewhat due to lack of a big reader base, but mostly because I’m really lazy. Though, now I’m tempted to give it up just so I can write a farewell message like that. Spice it up with naughty words, too!

  • I have considered a number of reasons why I should not blog or why I should give it up and they are compelling. Writing a single issue blog is both hard work and does focus the attention of others on me when I can certainly do without that attention.

    The “enemy” is both vicious and entrenched and often seems to have the support of big media, the government and their agents and their self declared moral high ground; not to mention the support of the ghostly “vast majority of the general public”.

    Having said that, they *are* wrong. So what can I do but start a blog? It is one of a very small number of tools available to me and by far the most powerful. Indeed I have begun to receive unsolicited mail from the Houses of Parliament – the Eagles Nest.

    No more boiling frogs! Hooorah for the blog!

  • David Mercer

    For a high profile scoffer who’s now blogging, see boingboing.net, where John C. Dvorak is now guest blogging in the right hand sidebar!

    He pooh poohed them HARSHLY in print, and has now eaten crow