Having said that, any drop in blog output on my part is down to personal reasons and time constraints more than writes block.

Too right…it IS 97% “a done deal:”

http://bodwyn.wordpress.com/2009/05/24/ninety-seven-percent/

The thing now is to “keep ON ignoring the dirty bastards,” as my ninety-one-year-old farm neighbour here in southern Minnesota, Mr Judson Andersen, says.

(1) I’m getting tired: I can’t churn out three-plus hits a day on-the-fly, on any average day any more.

Rather than cover breaking stories about the crass and “in-your-face” wickedness of this government, our blog is slowly reverting to its original function, which was to publish more or less learned commentaries and papers by theoretical libertarians.

(2) Our hit-stats are falling too, sort of in line with other blogs as big as us. This is possibly indicating that people are now waiting for the fallout to settle after the massive destabilisation of the Political-Enemy-Class’s supposedly impregnabl, and self-defined position: this was astride everybody’s liberties and human sensibilities.

It may not matter. Either we’ve won (which I doubt) or the Enemy-Class, currently discombobulated a bit, is regrouping for another assault, this time to include the destruction of current prominent (and the regulation of less prominent or newly-emerging) bloggers specifically: I favour this scenario.

But the problem with Statism is that you can’t make it go away and evaporate, as a meme, just by defeating it resoundingly a couple of times. These are just casual battles. the real libertarian bloggers (and that is more of you all than you think you even are) need to hang on in, for the long haul, which is about to begin.

The next generation of successful blogs I believe will be very much like my own (plonquer.blogspot.com). We modern bloggers simply ignore the ‘news’ and just make up stuff. It may not be true but in the world of Gordon Brown and New Labour we’re after all only doing the same as the government.

The ‘people’ are tired of reading about how dreadful Brown, Labour and the world have become and are looking for ‘new’ information. It’s old hat that the UK is trillions in debt so why bang on about it? People want new, different and exciting information that the Guidos and Iain Dales of the world simply don’t deliver anymore.

How many bloggers had the courage to break the ‘news’ that ‘Baron Mandelson of Foy’ is actually a cleverly chosen anagram of ‘A Model of Broon’s Fanny’? None – other than Major Plonquer.

Who else reported on the rumour that Gordon Brown was to replace Carlos Teves at Manchester United? And since he thought the red shirt was ‘elitist’ Brown would play the game in a lounge suit? Or that Alex Ferguson was to adopt the new strategy of Post Neoclassical Endogeous Long Ball Game? Who indeed?

If bloggers are to be successful in the digital age they need to stop sitting on their spotty behinds waiting for ‘news’ to happen and start being a little more creative.

I finish every blog with the phrase ‘You couldn’t make it up….’ What I don’t say is ‘That’s my job.’

Mind you, I think DK would once have said the same thing, no?

Can’t decide which I prefer…

Instead of looking around themselves and realising that they were seeing the greatest architecture made manifest, each person looked only at their own candle thinking that their flickering flame was the one and only true enlightenment.

So entranced by their own elucidations, they wandered out and away from the Great Hall, into the darkness and finally, surrounded only by the void, they became completely lost.

These poor benighted souls are now known by us as Bloggers.

Like DK, I find there is so much to get stuck into that I sometimes cannot be bothered. There are so many directions in which one can be pulled. But I do not share the view that bloggers have won, rather that perhaps some of us have hit a plateau. The extent to which bloggers can attack the wrongheadedness of government, push for transparency and comment upon hypocrisy and failings, has declined with the recent outcry.

From a personal perspective, the things that most exercise me are the things I have the least control over… e.g. the wilful ignorance by the political class of the public views of EU membership in its current form; and the ongoing narrative about global warming/climate change with its complete disregard for lack of evidence and actual observation.

I can blog about this stuff until I am blue in the face – and I have done – but there are only so many ways of giving the same message before it becomes boring and repetitive. Finding a niche that is of value and interest to people, as EU Referendum has done over Iraq and now Afghanistan, is the route that more general political blogs may need to take if they are to remain satisfied. But for my part that will take more time than I have to give.

That for me has become a reason to give up blogging and do something else with my time, where the end result gives me a sense of having achieved something. It would have been nice if blogging had won though…

Joined to this is a lowering threat that some time soon there is going to be an example made. Kicking the powerful has a full and equal response as soon as the hurt is felt badly. So some elephants in the room, the ones that will really turn to charge, are not being mentioned. For instance, all power hierarchies sexually exploit the young as is recounted from the earliest times to the present day – the roman Catholic clergy are not alone except in being an acceptable group to be nailed.

Blogs gossip, and together, sometimes, they push an agenda. Some agendas will unleash a backlash and a victimisation unseen so far. I think about that; much bigger/ more vulnerable bloggers must do so too.

The problem with blogs is quality control of the comments. I read the comments on Conservativehome because they are usually sensible or interesting. I almost never open up the comments on Guido because they are usually bar room brawls or written in green ink in CAPITALS.

Blogs will never replace newspapers because they are niche providers. I read Guide and Conservativehome every day but I also read the Telegraph because I dont just want to read about politics and I cant be bothered to trawl 20 different blogs even if someone had a reliable list of what blogs were interesting.

A wise perception. For everything there is a season.

Blogs have done for journalism what the printing press did for Word of God and the Reformation did for the Church – democratised it, demystified it and made it accessible. It is not that anyone can do it, but that anyone may. The curtain has been torn; the message is no longer controlled by a ruling elite; the meta-narrative of the oligarchy has been surpassed by a myriad of micro-narratives, each communicating its own perspectives and creating its own truth.

Those protestors against universalism who have made blogging an art will endure because the best of everything always does. The mundane, trivial and superficial will pass away. Twitter is onomatopoeically ephemeral and utterly forgettable: it is just part of the background noise of the sound-bite life.

But real life is about politics, philosophy and religion, and each of these concerned with the pursuit of truth. Blogging will continue until the truth is found and the means are discovered to instil it by extra-sensory means.

Presently, that moment is death.

Maybe the next step on the process you describe will be to have more bloggers and people who understand the nature of this beast running for parliament? Change the system from the inside?

(Pointed look in Charlotte’s direction)

Who knows, could even be the start of getting ‘da yoof’ involved…

Fetches thesaurus and Shakespeare insult fridge magnets

Maybe (probably?) blogging as it’s currently practised isn’t the best way of doing that? Hence the brick wall we all feel we’ve come up against?

Having said that, the brutal truth is that we can’t have mass participation self-government unless and until revenue collection and spending is devolved from the centre. Everything else flows from that. And getting that is a daunting goal. It requires either a change to the existing system the powers that be will never tolerate or the complete overthrow of the entire system by underground technological means.

I suspect you’re right, Alix. It’s funny how that happens. Occasionally I have stuff I really fancy writing about (iPhone development details, mainly) that I just don’t want to bore my three readers to tears with when they’re far more interested in politics. I suppose we ought to be consistent and go ahead and bore them to tears, but it doesn’t really work like that.

“maybe we all just need the Tories to come in and provide us with a fresh source of government clusterfuckage”

That’s precisely it! We’re in limbo – Labour are a shell of their former selves, but we can’t get on with attacking a Tory government until there’s actually one in power. Also, well done on the elaborate swearing which beats my naughty language filter!

MatGB, yes, the sunshine has an undeniable affect – and we’re moving swiftly toward ‘silly season’. But still…

Demolishing and exposing decadence in the old order was the easy bit. How to use the power of networked mass technology to create new forms of inclusive governance in the UK and EU without slumping into chaos or nasty populism – that’s the challenge.

And it involves being creative, serious and disciplined – maybe the prospect of that is what is putting people off?

Most are dormant, but the same people are active in Facebook and similar. And, they’re still linking to blogs and cool stories, just not doing it by writing a whole post.

4/5 years ago, blogging (especially including livejournal) was effectively the only social network option that could be effective, forums only worked for similar interest groups (most of my initial list of blogs came from users of my old university forum, Jennie’s came from some fandom forums). Now, for the people that just want to chat and share info with friends, Facebook and Twitter do that much more effectively.

I made my first post to my blog in about 3 weeks last night—something pissed me off. I haven’t posted to LibCon in months, can’t be arsed, my old politics-only blog is completely dormant, and the new one that we might launch is on go-slow.

Having said that…

It’s the end of June. Even a heat-hating curmudgeon like me is enjoying spending time outside, eating meals sat on the doorstep, etc.

People post less when the weather is good.

Stu, hadn’t read your post about Guido linked above, agree completely, really bothers me when supposedly smart bloggers on ‘my’ notional side think Guido’s going to roll over and play scratch if/when Davey boy gets elected. But then, I’m as much a left libertarian as I am a ‘proper’ liberal, so perhaps it just makes more sense to me.

I don’t know about the others but I, at least, started out in exactly the same way. I didn’t become aware of its being a “process” until I was halfway through it. I suspect it’s sort of inevitable – you start out with an online world as wide as the sky and you end up, for better or worse, with an audience, a modus operandi and a series of topics you want to pursue to their logical conclusions.

It’s only in private writing (i.e. on a portable carbon-based interface) that I’m finding myself able to invent things and move my thinking on at the moment. I’ve been thinking I might back out of the political blogosphere and take up a history blog I set up a while ago. (And probably the same thing will happen there, eventually.)

On the other hand, maybe we all just need the Tories to come in and provide us with a fresh source of government clusterfuckage

‘A water-cooler for the self employed’.

Yeah, Charlotte said something like that on Twitter, as well. It’s true that it’s a battle, not a war, but I can’t help but feel there’s a sea change occurred. It’s the fact that those ‘solutions’ are already being so royally lambasted and ridiculed in the mainstream press that’s different. Like Alix said, when Murdoch starts taking you seriously, something must have changed.

It’s interesting you guys talking about a process being completed. I only ever started this blog because I enjoy writing and needed an outlet; I never had any specific thing I wanted to change in mind (and still don’t). I suppose if you set off with a mission, eventually that mission will be won or lost.

BB, I agree that most bloggers run out of steam eventually, but so many so quickly? It’s not just the three I highlighted – Lord Elvis (briefly) gave up, Daily Referendum is ‘still trying to decide if he wants to keep blogging’, Unenlightened Commentary is ‘uninspired’… It’s a widespread phenomenon.

I don’t think blogging is ‘going away’, and clearly there’s other people with other missions who are going to be taking up the torches, but there’s a definite ‘end of an era’ feel about the place right now.

I’d see Twitter as part conversation and part “flyers”.

Is it too much to think of my Twitter stream as an instant blogroll edited by other people?

Blogging going?

I think that that is a silly question for anyone to ask without explaining their definition of “blogging”. Charles Arthur is relatively clear what he means; all the “OMG we have a story to fill space” crowd are not.

It’s not going, just losing the things the platform is no longer the best option for.

I remember the days when getting a link from someone was exciting — indeed, I remember being excited the first time that you linked to me.

That may be part of it too: that success takes away the challenge…

DK

I certainly feel like this.

And I agree with your assessment, Stuart. Except that we haven’t really won: although we have broken open Westminster, the “solutions” that the government is coming up with are possibly even worse than what went before.

I know this, and I know that there is plenty to rail about: I just can’t be bothered to write about it.

I suspect that Alix’s point about “all the people I was ever going to convince have been convinced, and the people who were never going to be convinced weren’t” is pretty darn close to articulating how I feel.

The UK political blogosphere has changed considerably since I started: it is more partisan than it once was, and blogs are no longer the new frontier of comment. There are so many more of them (and so many more readers too), and finding good blogs has become a chore — because there are so many of them. (I should be able to articulate this phenomenon better, but I’m too tired.)

And I’ve run out of inspiration — for the blog, and right now, at this very moment…

DK

Others take up the cudgels, though (hell, I remember when DK was the new kid on the block). But because it isn’t always obvious where the action has moved to it is easy to get the impression that things are dying.

Certainly I feel a process has been completed with the blog, of some sort. Though a lot of the time I haven’t won at all, sadly. I’ve said everything I want to say about tax and liberalism and the freedom to get drunk, and all the people I was ever going to convince have been convinced, and the people who were never going to be convinced weren’t.

On the other hand, pretty much everything to do with tax I’ve been wishing for for the last eighteen months is now Lib Dem party policy, so that’s one of the better reasons to take a break. It wasn’t to do with me blogging in any direct way, clearly, but I guess I was part of a chorus of opinion that got its way.

In an odd way, the ultimate proof of what you’re suggesting might be the Nightjack story. Once Murdoch starts taking you seriously, you probably have won. Did you read Anna Mikhailova’s follow-up piece about how nasty and scary the bloggers are? A whiff of fear and calculated bitchiness rises off it that makes it, oddly, the most immediate thing I’ve read in a newspaper for a long time.

That reminds me, I must go and tell Chicken Yog he gets a special mention in it

I support Twitter- in fact the main use I have for it is drawing attention to other people’s blogs, which is far more of a useful role for me to be playing than updating my own blog, given that I hardly ever do as much.

As with literature, I think I am missing out by being monoglot. It is vaguely disconcerting to think of all the worthwhile stuff to which I am totally oblivious because I can’t understand it. Were I a Persian speaker I could get much deeper involved with this Iran business, for example.

“Incidentally, somebody asked me where blog post ideas come from (an arrogant question to answer, of course), and the only thing I could think was ‘read what everyone else is saying; work out why they’re wrong; tell them so’.”

Funny that, because I used a similar method when voting in the Euro elections.

I went through the list of candidates & slagged them all off to the best of my ability. I then voted for the candidate who had the fewest negative features.

I’m not suggesting that the blogosphere is going away, nothing of the sort. Definitely not going ‘sour’ on the blogosphere – quite the opposite.

Just trying to come up with a half decent explanation for the recent ‘slowing down’ that seems to have come along. I think it’s for good reasons.

I don’t think Charles Arthur is talking ‘complete bilge’, either. I think he’s spotting a wider trend of where the comment goes nowadays. I also think he’s right about it. You forget that ‘UK politics’ makes up only a tiny portion of overall internet comment – there’s many more people talking about stuff on Twitter now than there were creating blogs, and there’s many bloggers spending more time on Twitter than they do writing for their own blogs. It’s a trend, not a certainty.

I absolutely agree with you about not feeling pressured into writing stuff when there’s nothing to say. Incidentally, somebody asked me where blog post ideas come from (an arrogant question to answer, of course), and the only thing I could think was ‘read what everyone else is saying; work out why they’re wrong; tell them so’.

See this- you could apply it to me as I rarely write posts, but I often comment & I read more or less whenever I can. I can’t imagine any circumstances in which I’d stop, unless I had to work ridiculously long hours (I mean well over 40) or carry out some kind of family obligation repeatedly.

This feeling of somehow being obliged to write posts is the antithesis of the blogging spirit. If people are a bit tired, they shouldn’t feel beholden to me or anyone else to write a post. You can always come back later. I’ve had 4 blogs. & now I actually explicitly state that there won’t be regular posts.

I myself know of a lot of blogs (Heresy Corner, for example, & “Eunomia”, which I recommend if you don’t read it yet) that are regularly updated. You can always find them.

Remember when it was all a new world & you went around expanding your blogroll every day? There’s no reason for those times ever to end. I’ve been getting into a load of stuff through Andrew Sullivan, & commentors on Liberal Conspiracy often operate their own blogs which are really good.

I think your approach of linkblogging is good in that regard. You can see on my blogroll the blogs I read: I like to think, even if someone decided my own blog was totally worthless, they’d still go onto something worthwhile thereby. That blogroll is the one I use for my own reading, btw, so it contains everything I like.

I think Charles Arthur is talking complete bilge actually. He obviously only follows the top blogs from Wikio, even though I view most of them as aesthetically & intellectually inferior to the ones I read, few of which are in the top tier of popularity.

I don’t want you going sour on the ‘sphere & what it offers. Here behind this particular screen it’s always a great, uplifting thing. Unless I’ve got indigestion or a hangover