The important dynamic for blogging is one that I tweeted about yesterday: write what you believe, and defend what you write. If one writes from conviction, and defends that writing (and the liberty to write), one has a good chance of making one’s way through good times and bad. (In the course of defending something, there’s an opportunity to adjust one’s thinking, too.)
The same cannot be said for those driven by status, situation, social scene: they’ve no internal temperature, and like cold-blooded animals, they’re especially dependent on even slight changes in the weather for their survival.
Blogging often starts out as an alternative to conventional media, but over time persistence takes a toll on conventionality. That’s why in response status quo voices will sometimes imitate the form and style of blogging. When that fails, as it often does, they’ll search for any forum, any medium, to get their message out.
It could not be otherwise. The same desire that formerly motivated people to dominate a social scene will cause them seek new platforms when their old ones are no longer exclusive, or when their old ones are challenged.
That’s not political conventionality’s problem, though: it’s not a lack of a platform that imperils the status quo. It’s the enervation and dissipation that comes from being an exclusive voice, lazy and dull and presumptuous. Social neediness imperils sharp thinking, and to obscure thinking about more than one’s place in a much larger scene than the here-and-now.
The core motivation of conviction, and the impulse to defend those convictions, keeps blogging a clear, persistent, enjoyable pursuit.