Blogging Culture: Change Over History

How Did We Get Here?

The start of blogging existed before we started calling it blogging, though it was more like a set of links personally put together by a guy named Justin Hall, as described in a quick summary of the history of blogs, published through the Notre Dame of Maryland University's website. The term itself came from the words "web log" put together, thus blogging was the logging of the web. Quickly, we came to the formation of the initial websites Open Diary and Blogger to streamline the process.

[Source: Glenn Carstens-Peters]

    Here is where I believe we started to go off course, an inherent flaw baked in from the get-go.

    I feel like the true nature of the blog came from the desire to educate, share resources, and encourage the spread of personal websites. I don't think there is anything wrong with the use of centralized tools to form something of your own; in fact, this very blog is published through Blogger itself. But, we should ask what comes of the continuance of this practice that has been ongoing for so many years. Just as the idea of the blog quickly changed in character, the nature of these centralized platforms too changed in character with respect to time. This impact is not only seen on the largest blogs, however, but can also be seen when asking questions regarding the process of blogging itself.

    Upon looking for resources to help with the formation of this very post, I stumbled upon a list of tips as described by Jackie Voutsinas over at Hubspot. Casually written in the title already shows an underlying assumption of the culture behind this medium - in the title! It is called, "12 Undeniable Reasons People Hate Blogging" (emphasis mine), and tips 9 and 10 are even more revealing. How a hobby for the sake of community could be hated by someone is beyond me, and worse, the idea permeates that we should be giving tips to people who appeal to those hating a medium while using it as if it should be a productive hobby; as if it should be getting results. Then, the medium itself comes across as yet another carved-out hobby driven by a desire to serve advertisements and a form of job creation. I think we'd all agree that turning a hobby, turning something we love doing, into a job is the ideal. Imagine making YouTube videos for fun, and getting paid to live off your hobby. I'd be hard-pressed to disagree with such an offer myself. But... the broader context should be considered.

    In 2003 is where we saw the rise of Google's AdSense, and major blogging platforms tagged along, and shortly after came video logs, A.K.A. "vlogs". YouTube was the leader, and Google itself had its eyes set, later turning it into an ad-serving platform and acquiring it totally. By 2011, Google was already treating what they deemed low-quality blogs as belonging to the chopping block. Considering what passes as a Google search nowadays, it's questionable how they knew the difference between good and bad material. This is the context behind what I'm showing. I will demonstrate this by showing two different blogs, one a mainstream and view-pushing atrocity with the other a typical, niche blog with a sizable following. Even among two well-known (in their respective communities) websites in the same category, the discrepancy is intriguing.

Music Blog Against Music Blog: What Could Be the Difference?

Afterall, music is just music, right? 

[Source: Erik Mclean]

    But surely no two websites are the same. One music blog I will be discussing is a sensational blog, the image of celebrity worship; I can't tell if this is a a news site, or just a very poor way of putting trending music - and exclusively trending music - into the spotlight. A light that these people are already shining in, and reaping the rewards from greatly. The other music blog, in stark contrast, seems to emphasize unique sounds regularly coming out, with inclusion for the underground without completely discarding the mainstream trends - all without the click-hungry headlines and brief pieces that can be readily discarded after the second it takes to lightly gaze over it.

Rolling Stone

What is Rolling Stone? This is a publication that reports on popular culture. I might be quick to claim that this itself is the reason for how much I dislike it, but there's more to it. For the sake of proper comparison, all discussion regarding these two pieces of media are going to be tied strictly to their music and music-related counterparts.

    I'm going to get straight to the point on this publication: there is too much fluff, but worse too much fluff on already-prominent artists who are already at the top. Now, if the vaguely mentioned blog from earlier wasn't familiar enough, this is the one I called "sensational" and referred to as its tendency of "celebrity worship" just a couple of paragraphs above. I will say that I can't hate this too much, however, and I do like the fact that there is a place to go to for the sake of keeping up with what's new. In addition, I will bring up a piece written about an up-and-coming artist that was done brilliantly. In this published blog, Luh Tyler was discussed as a 17-year old Florida-native breaking into the rap genre. M. T. Richards wrote this piece, and I was not expecting such a well-written description of the artist:

"What do you get when you cross Suga Free, a gloriously rampaging, dictum-spouting icon of SoCal pimp rap, with Shawty Lo, a long-deceased pioneer of ATL snap music? Tyler ... sounds like an amalgam of those two older gents"

    This is where music blogs really start to shine, and I wish it was easier to access such great content more consistently on mainstream platforms. This specific platform is definitely a professional-only blog, as seen by the need to appeal for a broader audience and its pure career-oriented content curators. This blog doesn't really get much influence from the casual blog styles. When looking toward the reason behind the blog posts, and the purpose for writing them, of course music is going to be the most obvious selection, but I would say that the purpose seems to be more that of a celebrity-centric platform to give personal details on people on the top of the music industry; partially, this is to give the artists credit where it's due. I'd say the other piece of keeping a magazine like this alive is to maintain the dominance of these same artists and to promote this idolization of celebrities. 

    Many headlines relating to music are what would be referred to as click-bait material, with a bunch of titles geared towards garnering attention. There are a moderate amount of images, and we do see some articles getting pushed that stay off this course, and, as expected for a music blog, plenty of links and references are made to the artists themselves as well as their recent albums. 

    Another thing about the blog is the way it's all put together, the top page organized into three main panels to maximize the ability to see all the top articles recently written. I both love this and hate this - today, the content isn't too bad and seems rather engaging to a typical music-lover, but tomorrow this could be geared towards very different content that might be representative of what I'd call lower quality. Regardless, this outline is brilliant.

EarMilk

EarMilk is known in the music community, but is a little more niche. Unlike Rolling Stone, this publication is less focused on the "Pop Culture" aspect of music. I truly feel like I can click on any piece of the blog and stumble on a wonderfully-written article with a great artist that I didn't know about at best, but at worst walk away with an artist that simply isn't for my tastes. The way this website is organized is so simplistic, and I really like how you can readily get to the exact type of genre you're looking to explore on any given day. On the side bar, there is a section for "Popular Music," as well as sections below for "Community Voices" and a (really inactive) Discord server. I think the embedded Spotify button was an excellent touch, though I don't really use the music service. To top it off, there is no hiding from artists who are genuinely already in the spotlight: this blog is not dodging something for simply being mainstream, like others try to do.

    My complaints about the blog? It's almost too niche, and I would like to see a little more activity; I don't think this can happen without compromise and simply turning into any other of its variety that is already more popular. I guess you could say that my problem is the fact that the content I like to see just doesn't get the clicks and attention it needs ... because there is an inherent desire to not force click-bait and sensationalism. Like other music blogs, EarMilk also falls into the problem of emphasizing individual artists a little too much. You could say that my problem with these blogs isn't what they do, but instead how they do it. You could say the purpose of the blog changes the dynamic here, where it's almost clear by the style of their writers that they are doing what others do, but differently. It's not reinventing the wheel, but instead using the wheel as a tool to do what everyone else does ... but better.

    While maintaining it's status for the professional aspect of its writers, I would also like to note that this is definitely leaning into the casual category of professional-casual, far more than its mainstream counterparts like the aforementioned Rolling Stone. I feel this when reading opinion pieces on EarMilk, where the tone is a lot more laidback and relatable.

Closing

It is apparent that the problems I have with blogs are almost inherent to the medium based on the way it spun into existence from a very early stage. There really is no fix - not for the short-term, and not for the long-term. Unless someone reinvents the idea of the "web log," not much is going to happen, and they'll be almost-forced to repeat the same patterns if they want genuine recognition for their efforts. On a basic, individual level, I think as bloggers we should make our impact by using our platform to move into its original principles of hyperlinks, educating, and promoting high-quality content for people to enjoy regardless of whether there is enough "engagement" or views. We don't need to put people on a pedestal who already have their recognition, either, when we could be promoting other small-time bloggers and content creators, as well as smaller artists, brands, etc.

    This should all be about creativity and avoiding the trap of churning material for the sake of pushing clicks and ad-revenue, if we could help it. Maybe it's too hard to make the long-term impact we need with the tools we've been handed, but we could do our best to push the best content, even if for a small audience and little-to-no recognition for it.