White Flannel Trousers

I watch myself with guarded interest. I've seen so many of my fellow old-time bloggers hit this stretch, and spin out – when the giddy joy of having an audience dwindles (as the audience does), when you realize that even if, for once, you can say exactly what you mean, in public – well, so what? It doesn't make much difference. And you realize that, in the blogosphere as in life, for the most part, the only people who want to listen to you are the people to whom you listen. Stop visiting them, they'll stop visiting you. There was a time, in the early, heady days of blogging, when many of us thought the rules of the social universe were about to change. Our audiences would grow and grow, more and more people would realize just how irresistibly brilliant we were, and then... well... something would happen. And when it did, we'd be happy.

Well. There is, still, a deep happiness in just having my say. And I have been extraordinarily fortunate in my “fit audience though few.” But the world looks just the same – and history ain't changed – and now, ten years down the road, maybe I feel a little foolish that I ever entertained such notions. And forget, perhaps, to treasure as deeply as I should the people who still do read thoughtfully.

Blogging, it turns out – social media generally – does not scale at all well, and there's no particular reason why we should have thought it would. A sort of membrane forms around a readership, and new people become less and less inclined to cross that membrane: and in the meantime readers fall away, for one reason or another. Blogs become ghost-towns. We post less often, less freely, less engagingly: we visit other blogs less and comment less when we're there. And meanwhile, the conversations have largely moved to Facebook and Twitter. Blog posts become more set-pieces than conversations. And as one's virtual and real social circles converge, one begins to feel the ordinary social constraints re-assert themselves. If, in the interim, we have also grown ten years older, the decay of conversability and one's ability to form new friendships is all too familiar. We've grown shy, within our membranes: we grow less and less sure of our ability to judge what's appropriate, what's funny, what's charming. These things seem to happen quicker and vivider in the virtual world, but they're happening in the meat world as well.

So. It is time to climb out of the river and shake myself, spraying water over all and sundry; time to forget my dignity and chase some sticks; time to remember how brief all of this is. I have to grow old, but I don't have to grow timid.

The words, the words are as young as ever, and the sun is as fierce. Welcome the sixte, whan that ever he shal!