What is this, 1999?

All roads lead to...

• Jason: Hmm.
• Jason: I've been doing a lot of thinking about this sort of thing over the last two years
• Jason: well
• Jason: okay, not a LOT but some
• Ernie: no, sounds like you have
• Jason: I'm wondering if the age of personal blogs that have any meaning are over. It seems that a) you can do your own thing, but be obscure because instead of being one of 200 or 2000, you're now one of 20,000,000 because the barrier to entry is a lot lower and everyone has an opinion, b) if you do become popular you get a community of commenters and suddenly you have a relationship with your readers and that steers your site overtly because it's not all about you anymore, or even subtly because you want to keep the readers you have, and unless you have a personality strong enough to go "fuck you, this is my site" and have people love you for it, you have to deal with that. c) we're in the age of mega-blogs, like Gawker and Perez and newsblogs and et cetera, and personal blogs are seen as quaint at best, ridiculously egotistic at worst, and that's filtered down that d) some personal blogs have become personal brands and all about selling the writer as an expert, and all the politics that that engenders that gets obnoxious for people like you and me who just want to write something funny occasionally, or make a point from our respective perspectives on culture as it affects us.
• Jason: It's like.... if television had started as all cable-access programming, and then suddenly got all professional, and then got cable.
• Jason: so those who were around for the cable-access stage are all, "Hey, this used to be a laugh, what the fuck happened?"
• Jason: That's how I've felt pretty much ever since I stopped writing in Over Queersville.
• Jason: I've just had trouble articulating it. :)
• Ernie: That sounds pretty damn well articulated.
• Jason: Well thanks! I just managed to articulate it just now! :D
• Ernie: AND YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS! TUMBLR! SOAK IN THE IRONY
• Ernie: ;)