Social Networks Have Killed Blog Comments & No One Cares

Adagio For Strings is playing and my head is somewhere other than here. Lost in thought about the life I just left behind in Texas and the one I am rejoining here I am trying to sift and sort through it all.

It used to be when I heard this piece my head would go to Platoon because that was what I associated the music with. I remember when the movie came out and how many of the Vietnam Vets talked about it. I was all of 18 and too young to realize that many of those Vets weren’t particularly old and that they were sorting out their lives too.

Now I hear Adagio for Strings and think about the concert after 9/11 and I can’t not see the Towers in my mind or think about all that happened that day and all that has come since. Can’t help remembering what it was like to be a new father and to wonder what it would mean for my children.

Blog Comments Are On Life Support

Life is a series of transitions and choices. That is not an indictment or value judgment, just a comment based upon perception. So is that subhead.

My perception is that blog comments are on life support. There are so many other platforms and places that are taking away from blog comments it is hard to envision a time when they will recover.

Is that a bad thing? Well, it depends on your thoughts and perceptions.

I am not saying that no one comments on blogs any more because it still happens but now it takes more work to make it happen. Unless you are one of the popular bloggers you probably don’t get as many comments as you used to. I know that I don’t and that most bloggers I know feel the same.

Now when I see posts with significant amounts of comments it is usually because there is a community surrounding that blog or because there is some sort of controversy tied into it.

Sometimes I think about what I can do to change that. Sometimes I think about writing about how I hate the holiday season or why there isn’t a War on Christmas to see what kind of comments I can stir up and then I remember that I write about those things every year.

Should We Care/Do People Care?

We are at the 9.5 years of blogging mark. I mention it because I have to take that into consideration. Have to look at my perception and recognize that it impacts what I do and think.

Have to recognize that I don’t care about comments the way I once did and that writing for the sake of writing is far more important. When I don’t get to write it feels like I am choking. You know, it is that thing that happens when you don’t get your air. Sometimes you don’t get it because you are truly cut off and sometimes it a temporary thing, ya know like having a shirt collar that is too tight.

Should we care about the reduced number of comments? I don’t know. I see some outstanding conversations elsewhere. I see and participate in dad blogger groups and marketing/writing professionals where the conversation is stellar.

There is a lot to be said for those.

They help build relationships and provide for some great learning and those are real benefits. That is the kind of thing that makes this blogging business special.

Words Should Move You

I still operate off the same basic premise that words should move you. So I suppose that when I ask whether we should be concerned about whether we receive comments or not the answer is that if I don’t move you to comment I am not getting the job done.

And there you have proof of the contradiction of life. From the writer who writes whether you read or not. Life is still a series of contradictions and choices and it is up to us to make of it what we will.

We can choose to persevere when things are more challenging or we can drop our swords and fall upon them. Just don’t expect me to drop my sword because I never have learned/accepted that I can’t beat the dragon.

Comments aren’t dead, they are just scattered around hither and thither.

“Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

Ulysses- Tennyson