Thursday, February 25, 2016

Let the blogging begin, 2016 edition. Or, why social media blows chunks.

Well, I'm back again. You can thank me later.

After starting my first blog in ... 2002 I think (on Blogger/Blogspot, and here I am back again!) ... and putting in a good ten years at various spots, I saw the writing on the wall re: social media taking over. So I took a 3-4 year break and tried social media for a while.

Social media kinda sucks, as it turns out. Maybe you've heard. At least, it sucks for people like me, who enjoy writing and reading the good writing of others. Social media is *too* social; it's like junior high school, or Lord of the Flies, where small-minded social climbers use gang warfare to isolate, belittle, and silence those they disagree with. Good to know. Thanks for clearing that up, Twitter and Facebook users.

I have tried it, and found it wanting. Most social media yahoos are too lazy and partisan to bother reading anything resembling a decent argument against their views, much less argue back against it. I, on the other hand, have spent the last 15 years of my life reading news-oriented blogs that analyze and examine news coverage, from a mostly oppositional viewpoint. And as a result, I have been able to not just understand those who disagree with me, but to develop serious, informed, and usually devastating arguments to refute those viewpoints. It's called intellectual rigor, and few people, I find, are capable of it, and even fewer are informed enough to try it.

Anyway, enough of this bitching. I need something to blog about tomorrow, ya know.