Not A Blog™

I have written about this before, but never codified all my thoughts into one post. The topic came up again the other day when I was at the bar with Matt. We keep each other up to date on various memes: I keep him up to date on the internet stuff, and he usually tells me about broader cultural subjects. Even better is when the cultural stuff is available on the internet, so I see it without going out of my physical way.

In order to not miss anything, I will routinely type notes into my phone and email myself, so I remember it when I get home. I’ll also email my friends as to the things I think they should take a look at, although I don’t generally do this from the bar. The last time I tried to email Matt, the email bounced. When I told him, he said he wasn’t surprised because the system was probably down due to maintenance. It being an educational address, it would be down all summer while college was out. I asked if he had another. He didn’t. But then he comes back with, “Well, if you were on Facebook, you could just send me the link through there.”

All my friends know I’m not on Facebook, Myspace, Friendster, Live Journal, Twitter, DeviantArt, or Flickr. Neither is the Not A Blog™ hosted on a shared blogging site, such as Wordpress, Blogspot, or Blogger. In fact, all the sites I post stuff to are ones that I personally own and maintain. The sole exception to this is YouTube, to which I’ve posted two videos. One was a collaborative project (the Zombies short), which doesn’t count because the whole point of making it was to post it on the internet. The other has received such a plethora of incomprehensible comments that I’m unable to even form the thoughts necessary to respond to them. (I’ve tried, too.) There’s no point.

I only interact on a regular basis with one forum: the one that I set up myself. Back when Myspace was new—and because of its newness, even more of the rage than it is now—I got hounded by a bunch of people as to why I don’t have a page. The bafflement was palpable. That pestering has mostly passed by now, but the recent incident at the bar serves to remind me that at least a few people still think I’m missing out.

For the record, I will list the reasons I don’t do the web 2.0 thing. (The essence of web 2.0 is consumer generated content: any website where you’re supposed to put stuff up and interact with a community.) You’ve heard these before, only now they’re organized.

1. I already keep in touch with my friends in real life. If I don’t keep in touch with you at least once every few months, I probably don’t want to. If I keep in touch with you in real life, I don’t really need to online, except via email. If I do keep in touch with you via Email, it’s for two reasons: because it’s not practical for me to do so in real life and/or it is more convenient. But it’s the only convenience I need. The added baggage of having dozens and dozens of “friends” as part of some online network greatly outweighs the advantage of being able to communicate with the one guy I know who doesn’t have reliable email.

2. I’m not comfortable putting my work up on a corporate site. Call me a conspiracy theorist. Call me a hopelessly old-fashioned Luddite. Call me Amish. I don’t care. I just don’t like putting anything on a site where you have to agree to an EULA. I don’t think a company would ever be able to get away with repurposing work (and I’m not at all worried that they would want to repurpose mine), but then again, it’s not something I need to worry about. Neither do I need to worry about censorship—a more tangible concern to Myspace-ites since the News Corp takeover.

Besides that, there is an implicit statement in the fact that, by posting ones work to a website, you are supporting the larger corporation behind it. Maybe most people don’t think of it that way. I’m not sure most people even know who is behind Myspace and Facebook; it’s just a way to keep up with friends. But when you have a Myspace that’s all “fight the power”, yet it’s hosted on a site owned by the largest media conglomerate in the world—well that’s saying something. And it’s not what you think.

3. Free sites aren’t free. They collect personal information. This is extremely valuable. If you’re thinking, I didn’t use my real name, and I left a lot of the fields blank, well that’s fine—except you still link to all your friends, right? Your friends who write about you, right? And you write about yourself, right? You’re not fooling anyone.

They also make money off you via advertising. I’ve considered running ads on the Not A Blog™. I don’t have enough readership right now to make it worthwhile, I don’t think. Plus, I like the clean, no-ad look. There aren’t many sites on the web that are still this way. (Though if I ever got a significant readership, I’ll probably cave on this point. I like money, too.) Regardless, if I do decide to run ads on the Not A Blog™, guess who gets to keep the money? This is in opposition to your Myspace blog where there are ads anyway (freakin’ annoying ones), and you get nothing.

4. I don’t care. Nothing beats good old apathy. When you get right down to it, I couldn’t care less whether or not someone can find me on the internet. If you need to use Google to find me, you’re probably not someone I’m interested in talking to. I already have more friends than I know what to do with; I definitely don’t care about trying to make more. I also do not care about networking—at least not online where it means slightly less than jack. Are you an editor interested in helping me get published? Are you a director looking for tech crew? Are you a philanthropist looking to sponsor my art? Do you know anyone who is? No? I see. Well, I’d say it was nice meeting you, but I hate to come across as disingenuous.

That’s not to say I don’t realize the value of networking. I wouldn’t be anywhere without it. But none of this networking was done even remotely on the internet. Every bit of networking that ever helped me in any way involved real-life meetings with people—and usually over a number of months, if not years. Online networking might work for some people, but the utter lack of personal communication makes it worthless to me. I have a hard enough time dealing with people in meat space.

In a nutshell, these sites offer all the hassles of dealing with people and companies without any of the benefits. I like my space right here. I like the obscurity of the platform. I prefer to build an audience through word of mouth and serendipitous yet pertinent connections. Random Schmoes can’t try to befriend the Not A Blog™. And like I’ve said before, I take pleasure in the fact that my aggressively boring web design acts as an automatic wall to three-fourths of the people out there.

Obviously these social networking sites are working for a great number of people. More power to them. My lack of participation is not an oversight.

-Ted