I\u2019ve participated with the \u201cBloggernacle\u201d since before it was called that (I recall the whole Banner of Heaven debacle, which shows my age somewhat).\u00a0 I have never served as a power player or all that prolific, and I mostly just lurk these days as I find most of the arguments the same old same old; you can only have the same arguments about authority, obedience, scripture, etc. before they get really tiring.<\/p>\n
However, I do have a few random thoughts\/reflections (in no particular order) on the \u2018Nacle based on my many years hanging around.\u00a0 Your mileage will definitely vary about whether my insights make any sense or not:
\n
\n1. I really miss Clark Goble.\u00a0 Long before President Nelson called for more civility in online discourse, he lived it.\u00a0 No matter how crazy, cranky, or divided the discourse on the blog \u2013 and whether it was progressive, moderate, or conservative blog, Clark could always find a way to discuss things civilly, reach across the ideological divides, and (overall) he just came across as a great guy.\u00a0 One reason I don\u2019t comment as much as I used to is that Clark Goble really set the standard for what I wish I could do with online engagement, and when I ask myself \u201cWhat would Clark Goble do here?\u201d I often can\u2019t replicate his civil, reasonable discourse. We\u2019re much poorer without him.<\/p>\n
2. The \u201cBloggernacle\u201d doesn\u2019t really exist much anymore. Back before social media really took off, blogs were the social media.\u00a0 Now, many of the original blogs are dead, dying, or way off in paths I\u2019m not interested in heading down.\u00a0 A few, like BCC have managed to diversify (such as with BCC Press), and Times and Seasons appears to have some staying power, though the audience is clearly smaller. Also, back when it first started to really take off, there was a lot more crosstalk and engagement.\u00a0 Over time, the blogs tended to fracture across ideological lines and retrench into their various camps rather than continue the engagement.\u00a0 I don\u2019t want to point particular fingers, but I found it rather funny when one blog would complain another blog was deleting comments when they did the same thing; the only difference was which ideological side the comments were on.\u00a0 Progressive blogs were upset when conservative blogs deleted progressive comments, but the conservative blogs would get upset when the progressive blogs would delete conservative comments.\u00a0 Not exactly a ticket to unity, there.<\/p>\n
3.\u00a0 The so-called \u201csnark\u201d sites are something I don\u2019t miss.\u00a0 While the movement of the snark from them to the main blogs (they served as an outlet, but they also allowed people to wallow in the snark) indicated a serious change in tone and engagement across blogs, I don\u2019t think they helped.\u00a0 Mostly, they just helped people entrench in their ideological castles more, rather than try and engage civilly.<\/p>\n
That all seems enough for now.\u00a0 I\u2019ll likely write about Battlestar Galactica, The Princess Bride, and Pop Culture Philosophy type stuff in future posts, but trotting down memory lane seems like a useful exercise and a way to get a few things off my chest before changing focus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019ve participated with the \u201cBloggernacle\u201d since before it was called that (I recall the whole Banner of Heaven debacle, which shows my age somewhat).\u00a0 I have never served as a power player or all that prolific, and I mostly just lurk these days as I find most of the arguments the same old same old; you can only have the same arguments about authority, obedience, scripture, etc. before they get really tiring. However, I do have a few random thoughts\/reflections (in no particular order) on the \u2018Nacle based on my many years hanging around.\u00a0 Your mileage will definitely vary about whether my insights make any sense or not:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10405,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-politics"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10405"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44649"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44650,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44649\/revisions\/44650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}