Introducing Blogger Reunion 2021
Who do you know that was blogging back in the early days? Where are they now? Do you ever go back and read old blog posts? Do you, like me, find the greatest joy in the comment section? Do you wonder where your favorites from back then are now? We all started writing for a reason. For me, I was lonely sometimes-I thought things and felt things that I wouldn’t share openly but could share in an anonymous blog (ironically), and when someone commented, it made my day. I wasn’t talented or astute but even I attracted readers just by showing up and being real (yet anonymous). We developed friendships and supported each other.
Were you blogging in 1999? 2009? 2019? Who were your favorites? Who was blogging then that you bonded with in the comment section. Is their blog still up? Can you still contact them? Let’s have a blogger reunion. Let’s get your gang back together! How exactly can we do this? Any ideas? I know that we need you (current bloggers) to read your old blog posts and reach out to the bloggers you loved with whom you’ve lost contact to see if they would be willing to blog another day. And then maybe we can comment and cross post and link and share and all that content management stuff. There are some voices I’d love to hear from again. I’m talking to you, Empress, Quilting IMP, Noelle, Lucky Punk, Elly Lou, Flying Chalupa, Suniverse, DBS, Average Broad, Girl Next Door, Ash, Practical Parsimony, Patty Punker, Bossy Betty, Laundry HMF, MommaKiss and TaxiVodka guy, among others. Where you at? Can you come out and play? It’ll be like old times. I’m also talking to GiGi and CB and other commenters whose comments were blogs, in a way. We need you, too.
Don’t mind me, just getting nostalgic over here. But look up your old blogger friends. Tell them we’re bringing blogging back. #bbb
Chicken out
Chicken's Consigliere 
🙂 The truth is that blogging is still popular.
It is just that vlogging and podcasting are the two shiny toys of 2021 (People tend to gravitate towards them).
I have been blogging since 2008; it all started on Blogger for me.
Unfortunately, a large percentage of the people who started blogging the same time I did, no longer blog.
I love the enthusiasm that you have for blogging and I wish you all the best with your WordPress blog!
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Hi Renard-we started blogging about the same time-I also started on Blogger at the end of 2008 maybe start of 2009? Not sure. But I’m thinking that maybe some of those old friends who don’t blog do still get the occasional comment so I’ve been leaving comments where I can. Just to see what happens. Can we do it? Can we bring blogging back?
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🙂 Truthfully speaking, blogging was never gone. The blogosphere is filled with countless active blogs.
I do not think that leaving comments on abandoned blogs will make a difference.
What might work is doing a search for them on social media sites and if you end up lucky, you will come across their blog’s URL.
After finding their new blog, we can leave them a valuable comment in their blog’s commenting section.
Many people who once blogged on Blogger now blog on WordPress.
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I just wrote a long comment about blogging and bloggers that I quite liked and WordPress ate it when I tried to post it. I’ll be back tomorrow to redo it if it hasn’t shown up before then.
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Well that’s a bummer. WTF WordPress?
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OK, let me try this again and remember to copy it before pushing the “post” button…
I’ve had aspirations to start a blog of my own, but just haven’t done it, mostly because adding the time I already know I would spend on it to my already heavy daily online activity just won’t fit in the 24 hours they call a “day”, and something about my daily routine will have to change before that becomes something that could be real.
On the other hand, such changes do tend to happen to my routines, so it’s not a dead issue, just not likely to occur in the immediate future.
The first blog I read, back in 2003 when I first got online, was On Lisa Rein’s Radar, written by a woman I knew who was a teacher, musician, and political activist. The blog still exists, but hasn’t been posted to since 2010. On her blog I learned of the existence of Rachel Maddow and Jon Stewart.
The next blogs I read were where I learned that I could participate by commenting, and mostly found them on Digg.com, which is now a news aggregator, but used to be a user driven forum-like thing where content was voted on by readers and the front page was all items that very many smart people had read and liked. Most of those blogs were political, and many of them are still going. Angry Black Bitch, Blue Gal, Driftglass, The Rude Pundit, Just an Earthbound Misfit,I, and Field Negro, to name a few that I still read on a daily basis. Then, from that era, blogs that aren’t around any more; Ice Station Tango (changed its name for a while before disappearing) Zaius Nation (hasn’t posted since 2012), Rilo Kiley.net (a forum for fans of the band that was such a good community that it kept going for almost six years after the band broke up), Princess Sparkle Pony’s Photo Blog (stopped posting to his blog in 2015 but still posts on Twitter) and probably some more that I don’t remember right now.
Then, in 2013, we moved to the old foundry building and were without internet for a couple of months until my friend Sara took pity upon us and loaned me her MiFi hotspot, which came with a 6GB/month data limit that would get her in trouble with her boyfriend if it was exceeded.
Which in turn caused me to seek out more text-based online activity to avoid the data consumption streaming accrues. Which in turn brought me to a blog I neglected to mention above but had been reading for a couple of years by then: The Bloggess. Her comment section could often take an hour to read, and in it were several commenters with blogs of their own that I began reading.
Probably my favorite of those is Rubber Shoes in Hell where I left a comment yesterday morning, and of course there was a blog called The Chicken’s Consigliere, where I found another blog called Procrastinating Donkey…
Some of those blogs have become inactive or disappeared outright, Hacker,Ninja,Hooker,Spy, Aussa Lorens’ blog has been taken down and replaced with a landing page with a graphic of a sankofa, which she has tattooed on her hand, Fisticuffs and Shenanigans went idle for a year, came back for a few posts, and then disappeared, You’ve Been Hooked hasn’t posted since April, and there are a few more that I remember reading but not well enough to write about.
Then there are the sites that are technically blogs but I don’t see them that way, like Post Secret, which I’m sure you know about, Crooks and Liars, a news site with a liberal bent, and Political Wire, another news site.
Blogging is very much alive and well. Perhaps it never became what the media breathlessly predicted it would become back when it was new, but a lot of people still spend a lot of their time and attention on it. Twitter has drawn a lot of bloggers away from their blogs, and they can still be found there. If I had a Facebook account I could probably still be in touch with the folks from the Rilo Kiley board, but that’s not gonna happen.
As a disabled person, I find blogs and bloggers measurably improve my day to day life, and I would be poorer without them, so thank you for hanging in there.
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Did you have to write this all over again? I hope not! I remember You’ve Been Hooked-as a fellow hospitality worker, this was one of my favorites. Also, I remember Rubber Shoes in Hell but haven’t checked it out lately-I remember you pointing out that we have somethings in common, but I remember finding her also in the 2009-10 range when I was blogging pretty regularly. I think. I had some favorites-Flying Chalupa, Elly Lou, Suniverse…loved those girls and their strong voices. But..I think the first blog I really seriously got into was around 2003 and it was called Miss Doxie. It was about a woman in Georgia who was a lawyer, I think in her Dad’s firm, and she loved dachshunds, both hers and, I believe, her parents. She was really funny. I don’t think she blogs anymore, though, I have always thought and maintain that you should start a blog. You have things to say and great stories to tell, and maybe you’ll want a history of them someday. It’s easier to keep track of a blog than it is 50,000 comments on 5000 different blogs, you know?
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Sometimes WordPress won’t let me post certain things like long comments or comments with links in them under my new screen name, so I tried using the old one and it worked.
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I’ll look into this and get back.
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OK, it did it to me again so I’m back under my old screen name. Just as I figured it would, it happened: while doing my regular reading I ran across someone from my comment last night who I left out of the one above.
Her bame is Tammy Booth or as she used to call herself online Blue Girl (not the same person as Blue Gal, and yes, they do know of one another) and her blog was They Gave Us a Republic and We Intend to Keep It.
Put it in the category of blogs that I found on Digg.com that sort of disappeared later.
She had a brain aneurysm and had to stop blogging for a while, but is now a teacher who can be found putting the world to right on Twitter from KC Missouri.
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That’s so weird-I wonder why? I haven’t heard of her but I do like a Blue Girl. Or Gal. Either or. I seem to remember digg, but was never political so I wonder why I remember it. Glad she’s still out there-we need good ones.
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The first year I started blogging there were few that commented, probably few that read them. I seem to remember you were one of the first. I’ve blogged less and lless since my health started going south a couple years ago. I just don’t seem to have much to say. I no longer live in Montana, I’m near Seattle, living in my youngest daughter’s place, and am ok. I looked at some of the comments from 2010, and fewer than half of them are still blogging themselves. I probably do more fb now, and that only to message a few people.
Hope you’re doing well.
Should Fish More (Mike)
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Mike! You were and are one of my favorite bloggers. I’m sure I’ve missed a lot of your posts but when I’m in wordpress looking at my reader, if you have something I find it. I didn’t know you had permanently left Montana but I know you most often post from your daughter’s area and about your granddaughter, quite often. I’m so happy to hear from you. Thank you so much for checking in-what is new with you?
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I think I’ve been going for over 10 years? Not good at remembering anniversaries but perseverance in abundance! The bloggers I miss have either ghosted their blogs or passed away – but there are plenty still going and more to discover.
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Same here, Lisa, although I hope no one has passed, but it does seem like there’s still plenty to read. More than I’ll ever get to, in fact!
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Miss you too.
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