Tout Passé, Tout Cassé, Tout Lassé.

Dr Vee asks “is this the end of blogging?” or, perhaps to be more precise, the beginning of the end (as opposed one presumes, the end of the beginning)…

It is commonly said that blogging is dead. The refrain has increased in frequency over the past year or so, as Twitter extends its influence further and further.

I have been blogging since 2002, when I was just 16. Over the years, it has been my favourite means of communicating online — more than Facebook or Twitter. More than IM and perhaps even email.

But increasingly I find myself becoming tired of it. Partly, this is due to that pesky “real life” nonsense taking over. As I make the transition from school pupil to student bum to full time worker, I have less and less spare time to dedicate to blogging.

It’s a long essay and worth the read. Frankly, Twitter is for the ADD sufferers of this world. A restriction of 140 characters makes it about as useful as those sandbags people put against their front doors when the water is rising to first floor level. I don’t use Twitter and have no plans to. Although, to be fair, it did prove to have some benefit in the recent Carter Ruck affair. On the flip side, it has also been used as a tool for stifling free speech by rousing the lynch mob mentality that lies latent but only just beneath the surface in our society; and the lack of subtlety, nuance and depth of communication available made it ideal for the hard of thinking to jump on the bandwagon. Indeed, in the space of one week we saw both extremes come to play. All that said, when I want to communicate, I want to choose how much or how little I write and I want to be able to express my thoughts without worrying about how many characters I have to play with. Sure, a word limit can be used to apply some discipline to the writing, but a character count? Do me a favour.

So, is it the end of blogging as we know it? Well, there is that old French proverb that I like so much; Tout passé, tout cassé, tout lassé. Everything passes, everything breaks, everything wears out. Life is transient. We are but brief motes in time. The world about us will decay and vanish when the sun goes supernova. Everything we achieve or create will one day be dust. What never ceases to amuse me is that people still have the capacity to be surprised by the realisation that nothing is forever. Why should blogging be any different? It will die, one day, just as the pamphleteers of past generations are gone and almost forgotten. What we do is a passing fad – how long that fad will last is another matter. While it lasts, I am enjoying it. When it goes, well, it was fun while it was around and I’ll move onto something else.

Dr Vee comments with some angst about the size and quality of posts and sometimes he has nothing to say. My approach to having nothing to say is to say nothing. I don’t worry if nothing particularly strikes me such that I want to write about it. While I like to write something most days, if not, so be it and I’ll lose no sleep. It’s a hobby, not a job.

So, by and large, Vee’s concerns are not ones I share. I don’t care overmuch about page ranks and authority and I have no desire to tweet. I’ll write as the fancy takes me and not if I don’t feel inclined. I suggest Dr Vee chills out and adopts the same approach. It’s fun. It’s a hobby. It isn’t worth worrying about its demise. If it does, it does and there ain’t much we can do about it.

Why worry?