Blog, You Idiots
There aren’t very many good daily online writers anymore. There weren’t ever very many, but now, in 2016, I think, speaking generously, there are four. All of the old good writers aren’t writing anymore. And it seems like the new young people aren’t very interested in blogging and instead want to write long personal essays about sex, which is maybe a generalization, but if they are so interested in blogging where are all of their blog posts and why are all of the things they write long personal essays about sex? You see my point. And now Gawker is dead. What are we supposed to read now? There is nothing good, except, uh, Awl Network websites.
I don’t know how we’re going to continue like this if we all have to be online all day every day. We need good things to read. We need them steadily, from people whose voices we enjoy. Short things. Commentary about a topic the writer has a greater interest in than you do. Something funny. Something very stupid. Not some big, long, boring thing, just a little thing that you read and enjoy. If aggregation, less aggregate-y.
I think there used to be a good amount of this. In 2011, for example, I can remember enjoying at least three separate websites. But now two of them don’t exist and the other one is this one.
All the new big money websites want to publish “good work,” meaning essays, and I have a theory about those websites, though I have never visited them, and the theory is that those websites are where a lot of the good writers are hiding. Maybe you can force those writers to blog, if you own one of these websites? I know they don’t want to do it, but someone has to, and, I’m sorry, it’s them. End of discussion.
The system is bad. You’re supposed to become an editor and stop writing so you can make money finally. Or put in two years of daily aggregation to get to a career of one boring long essay a week, or three very long boring essays a year. That’s fine for some people but also we need people to do the stuff everyone actually likes.
I don’t know. Just blog more, please. (If you’re good at it.)
I’d like to read it.
OK, thank you.