This ditty’s playing in my head while I’m brewing coffee this morning:
Where have all the bloggers gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the bloggers gone?
Long time ago …
to the tune of "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" by Pete Seeger.
Vox Before Picture:
After:
I’ve written before of the dying-on-the-vine trend on Vox and it bears repeating for the strong scent of decay lately.
I’ve witnessed yet another exodus to other pastures. Who can blame them? Six Apart’s neglect of Vox is common knowledge if not now legendary.
Simultaneously, no small number of bloggers who used to post fairly or semi- regularly have either let their blogs die or maintain them on minimum life support. May sound nuts but I don't enjoy watching once-active blogs die slow deaths.
Then there's what I call the hit-and-run bloggers.
That course runs predictable. They begin as perhaps fairly regular bloggers who interact with their neighbors.
In time they post less and less frequently and still swing by to your place.
Then they pop up only to post and pay no attention to their friends and neighbors. Much as I may enjoy their blogs, I've de-neighbored hit-and-run bloggers for the simple fact that for me blogging interaction is key.
I troll for new blood by perusing comments/commentators at neigbors' blogs. I'll speak bluntly, a good number I don't much like for whatever reason or feel no draw. If it's true that one can judge a person by the company s/he keeps, it's a wonder some bloggers get neighbored!
I also seek fresh faces by typing in subjects of interest in the search bar. You ever do this? What a holy waste of time!! Virtually every hit leads to a dated post — c'mon, Vox, certainly someone's written about astrology since 2007! — or dead blog.
In sum, I'm reminded of a line by Woody Allen in “Annie Hall”:
A relationship, I think, is like a shark. It has to constantly move forward or it dies. And I think what we got on our hands is a dead shark.
I'm no shark, I am however a fish swimming in diminished shallow waters. Somewhere must be waters deeper than these 'cause lemme tell ya, anyone with a profound passion and need to write who looks to Vox for substantive feeding will be left holding the bag a dead shark.
Barefoot Blogger 