4th downski
Buddies,
Tday aint my bloggin birfday. Tmorrow is. Thatd be th start o th 5th year o The Joey Polanski Show in th blogassfear. So that means that tday is th las day o th JPSs 4th year -- th end o YIV. Im publishin this post tday bcause th end of a bloggin year seems th bettr ockasion fer reflecktin on th past. Th start of a new bloggin year woud seem t call fer lookin ahead to th future, and I dont wanna do thatski. Lookin ahead to th future always involves eithr th hazard o predicktin or th pressure o promisin, and HECK if th future aint a lot more excitin when its, like, a totl mystry, rightski?
Mmm hmm ... Kay.
So then ... lets do a little lookin back, shall we?
Well ... aint no sugr-coatin it, fokes ... YIV was anothr year o contracktion fer th ol JPS. Contracktion as opposd to expansion. JPS playrs have been droppin in droves. No ... They aint gone th way o David Carradine, Michael Jackson, Billy Mays, & Steve McNair. They gone more th way o Jack Nicholson. You know ... Frozn Jack. Basickly outta th bloggin game -- or, if not outta th bloggin game, at least done bein what I think is best calld a PLAYR.
Seen from a certain prspecktive, this is only to be expecktd. Look ... I said it in my post last year at th start o YIV ... Merely gettin into a 4th year o bloggin awready done took us byond th norml life-span o most blogskis. Endin th 4th year takes us evn furthr inta watrs only seldom travelld. Aint suprisin, then, that many o th long-timrs who been playin th JPS stage ovr th past 4 years are ... yknow ... jus playd OUTski. Ts sad, but its natural; and, bcause natural, undrstandable. Cant be helpd, realy. But its always sad to lose PLAYRs.
Now this is a good time -- while dwellin on th dreary idea o contracktion -- to lift our spirits by payin homage to th Revrend Anaglyph and Tetherd Cow Ahead. It was in only my 4th munth o bloggin that I firs made th Revrends acquaintance. That was when Tetherd Cow Ahead was still a Blogger blogski. I found TCA by scannin th rollin list o updatd blogs that usta run on th Blogger sign-in page. Ocourse, th title attracktd me. I mean ... How coud it not? How coud I not be drawn to a blog whose title contains a genuine bit o Polanskiese? So it was late in Novembr o 2005 that I droppd in on th Revrend and postd this here coment. As you can see, my coment was characktristickly playful; but more impornt is th fackt that th Revrends rsponse was pleasantly playful as well. I mean ... th fackt that he rsponded at ALL told me right away that this bloggr was a cut above th usual limpnik one tends to find in th blogassfear. But mere playfulness alone does not a PLAYR make, fokes. Playrs PLAY, and they play not only in their own sandboxs; they play on othr fokeses home fields as well -- AND, most importntly, they take it on th road WIFOUT havin to be explicitly prodded or invitd (or, werse, spammd). They come ovr bcause they gots a natural curiosity about what fokes are doin in othr parts o th blogassfear; and they take th stage bcause ... well ... bcause thats just what its innem to do. THATs what makes a PLAYR, fokes. And so it was very soon aftr my first TCA apearance -- no tellin exackly HOW soon, ocouse, givn that th Revrend lives in Australier, which is in, like, anothr time or sompm -- that th Revrend made his first apearance on th Polanski Show stage. And a little while aftr that, I formaly intrducd th Revrend to th JPS gangski, and th Revrend formaly intrducd me to th TCA gangski.
Wit th aforementiond Jackin off o so many o th oldest JPS associates, th Revrend now ockupys that covetd spot at th top o th ol JPS links-listski. But here are two othr notewerthy fackts that yall shoud know about th association o JPS wif TCA. Firs, throughout my previos years o bloggin, I think I done linkd up sompm like 30 diffrent blogskis / websites. Of them, about 12 were blogskis I discoverd on independent scoutin-expeditions. Th rest were sites that came to my attention thru awready-establishd bloggin-associations. Of th blogs still left in th links-list, TCA is th only one that was found on such a independent search fer blogs run by PLAYRs. Seckon, not only were all th othr currently-linkd blogskis found thru prior associations, they were all found, direckly or indireckly, thru th JPS association wif TCA. My association wif Old Fish and Lemonade, Skittering Thoughts, Ginger Stick, and Gimcrack Hospital are all direckt results o th JPS association wif TCA; and my association wif Tongue In Check is due to th establishd association wif Skittering Thoughts. So them fateful meetings in late Novembr o 2005 have givn th Show its most enduring playrs; and among them long-timrs are also th Shows most valued & cherishd playrs as well. A special THANKSski to th Revrend, fer his invaluable contributions to th shtick and to th talent-pool at JPS.
And I guess it bears repeatin that th very recent addition o Nurse Myras Gimcrack Hospital to th links-list -- th latest fruit born o that fertile friendship -- was a extremely rare event in this age o contracktion. Fokes, my most recent scoutin expeditions in th blogassfear do not inspire much hope o any significkant expansion anytime soonski. Things have always been bad in this regard, ocourse -- th blogassfear has been largely a wasteland at least as long as I been lookin around in it. Th ovrwhelmin majority o blogs out there are jus online diarys publishd by fokes who (A) are shockd almost inta catatonia when exposd to my kinda shtick and (B) aint about to cut loose and do any real ballsy shtick emselfs. Once ya find one o them rare bloggrs who seem committd to prducin sompm FUN, more oftn than not they aint willin to play on any stage but their own. Th true PLAYR has always been a rarity o raritys.
But I think theres probly reasn to blieve that prospeckts fer findin a healfy stock o playrs are probly worse now than they evr been bfore. This came clear to me as I contemplatd & discussd a matttr that came up in cnnecktion wif a post publishd by Mike ovr at Tongue In Check back tward th end o April. This was th all-importnt Twittr post. In it, Mike askd his readrs a very pointd question -- a question which I confess I have also askd in th course o backchannel chattr wif bloggrs who seem to share a lot o my values when it comes to bloggin. Th question -- paraphrasin it slightly -- was: "Does anyone get th whole Twittr thing?" In my opinion, this post was importnt fer a numbr o reasns. Firs, it sorta got fokes among Mikes readrship (which pretty much encompasses th JPS readrship) to "declare emselfs" -- eithr as headscratchrs like Mike or as dedickatd Twit-wits. I came down squarely in th headscratchr camp, as did at least two othr cherishd JPS playrs. Seckon, in th course o th discussion that ensued in th coments-secktion, Mike assertd that somthing has killd th bloggin world, but did not idennify what he thougt mighta done it. That promptd me to offr MY diagnosis, and its one I still stand by. Bloggin is undrmind by th prevalent attitude among bloggrs that bloggin is just anothr netwerking platform like MySpace, Facebook, and Twittr. Th typickle bloggr blogs prcisely fer th prpose o makin & maintainin contackts. Now hownaheck is this a-spposta kill bloggin? Aint it a good thing to make friendskis? Well ... sure ... Makin friendskis is ALWAYS a good thingski, fokes. I considr th bloggrs who play th Polanski Show stage to be my friends. But these friendships o mine are grounded in a kind o shared value-systm -- a shared systm o values about bloggin. I like & admire certain bloggrs bcause o th way they operate in th blogassfear, th way they dedickate emselfs to makin their little secktions o th blogassfear inviting, engaging, & FUNski. When I mentiond blogging as netwerking as th killr o th blogassfear, what I had in mind is sompm I been railin against since th publickation o th first Polanski Show Manifesto back at th start o Year 2 -- namely, th fackt that a bloggrs real-world palskis will probly patronize th bloggrs blogski regardless o whethr th blog is in any way original or artful. Friends patronize th blogs o friends bcause theyre friends. And it dont take no rocket-sientist to figgr out that bloggrs whose blogskis enjoy a massive ottamatick readrship comprisd of a crew o real-world palskis -- whethr them palskis were palskis bfore th bloggin startd or only bcame palskis thru blogassfearick associations -- will not have a lotta incentive to do anything othr than what comes effortlessly. Thus is born one more blog-jurinal that coud be of intrest ONLY to fokes who happm to LIKE th bloggr doin th jurinating.
Th Revrend expressd similar opinions about th conecktion btween Twittrin and diary-bloggin, and similar opinions about th value o such thingskis; and that kinda brougt inta focus sompm intresting -- and th third reasn I think Mikes post was importnt. It seems pretty clear that LOTsa th fokes who declared emselfs as Twit-wits were also among them that are well on their way to Frozn Jack territory. It dawnd on me, as I think it musta dawn on Mike (and th Revrend as well, Id imagine), that Twit-wits, when they Twittr, they think they ARE bloggin! Their atchual blogs languish, while their Twittr feeds are all acrackle. Twittring satisfys whatevr itch they mighta had to do REAL bloggin. Blogging as netwerking gives way to Twittring as blogging; and real blogging dies as a resultski.
(I shoud make a point o addin here that not all bloggrs who Twittr have fallen inta such lethargy. Im pretty sure that Chickie is a rathr acktive Twittrer, but her blogski, Skittering Thoughts, remains quite acktive -- and Chickie remains a valued JPS playr.)
So prhaps you see now why I said that prospeckts fer findin werfwhile JPS playrs are dimmr now than they been in th past. Th long-standing tendency to see bloggin as netwerkin is now coupld wif a popular and addicktive substitute fer bloggin. Fokes who were born to be playrs will still take to bloggin, will still dedickate apropriate energys to creatin werfwhile blogskis, but will remain that rarity o raritys. What weell be missing, in this age o Twittring, are those fokes who might not be playrs when they entr th blogassfear, but who coud be coaxd inta cultivatin a dedickation to creative, collabrative shtick. Thems th ones who will be drawn so quickly to Nicholsonland that weell nevr get th chance to show em how much fun is to be had wif just a little bit o dvotion to craft.
And so if NETWERKIN is th model o bloggin that makes fer dull and eventualy lethargick bloggin, then what is th model that we PLAYRS advocate? Fokes, its bloggin as PRFORMANCE! Thats what weere all aboutski. Each blog-post shoud be a prformance, as shoud each coment on a blog-post. PRFORMANCE, fokes. Theres no PRFORMANCE in th diary-entry as such, no PRFORMANCE in th postin of a pitchr of a gardenscape or a drooly-facd kidski. Theres no PRFORMANCE in th postin of a coment that reads like a prsonal email from th comentr to th bloggr. Th blogassfear is a PUBLICK STAGE, fokes! That what its always and EXPLICITLY been at th Show and in th mind o Joey Polanski. If th ultimate goal o bloggin is jus netwerkin, and NOT prformance, then I cant figgr out why, once contackts are made, all cmmunickation btween th contackts dont take place thru private emails. Why bore th publick wif such stuff as is entirely unintresting to anyone who aint pluggd inta that part o th "netwerk"?
Viewd in this lightski, Ive somwhat alterd my opinion o private blogskis. Remembr th post that kickd off Year 3? There I mentiond a chick who was kinda witty, albeit disturbinly self-absorbd, who I kinda hopd might bring her ackt to th Polanski Show stage but who ended up flippin & floppin btween makin her blogski opm to th publick and makin it private for invitd readrs only. She ended up stickin wit th private blog thing, and I declared her to be, fer that reasn, rathr CLEARLY not Polanski Show material. Th whole idea o exclusivity seems so transparently haughty to me. And keepin clear o th rough & tumble of balls-out bloggin, hidin in a coccoon wif selecktd friendlys, seems so shamefully timid. I stand by em judgments, ocourse; but I guess now I can see a value to makin certain kindsa blogskis private -- most notably, th diary-blog that coud not possibly be of any intrest to anyone othr than (A) fokes who have sompm investd in a friendship wit th bloggr and (B) fokes who are diary-bloggrs emselfs and who hope to prchase th intrest o othrs by feignin intrest in th others diary-blogskis. By all means, lets make ALL EM BLOGSKIs private. Get em all th heck outta th reach o th NEXT BLOG buttn, so those o us searchin fer PRFORMANCE wont keep runnin inta th gardn-pics & th drooly-facd kidskis.
So weere PRFORMRs, fokes -- shtickmeistrs. And that means we got werk t do. Some o th werk we gots t do we been doin. Some o it is werk we aint been doin. If evn blog-coments are PRFORMANCE, then why do we somtimes ackt as if postin a coment is eithr a mere courtesy or th minimal dischargin o some obligation? When a playr publishs a post and I post a coment, have I done all my werk? Is th ball now in th bloggrs court, leavin me to wait till th nex post is publishd sos I can then post my obligatory coment onnit? Fokes, if bloggin is PRFORMANCE like Im sayin it is, then maybe I aint done all my werk if alls I do is post that one courtesy-coment each time one o my fellow playrs publishs a postski. Evry post -- evry well-craftd post, anyhow -- is a ongoin ockasion fer doin good shtick. Its a ockasion fer continuin to make sompm fun happm. Now I been as guilty as anyone o this coments as courtesys thing. But that was bfore I bcame cmpletely conscious o th ideas that bloggin genrally -- bloggin in EVRY aspeckt -- is PRFORMANCE, and that PLAYRs PLAY.
So a look back at four years o bloggin natchrly leads to lookin ahead to more. What if we all bcame spremely conscious o them two ideas -- BLOGGIN IS PRFORMANCE and PLAYRs PLAY? What woud th future then bring? Its werf thinkin about, cause Year 5 starts tmorrow.
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Or whenevr I post again.
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Assumin I post again.
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No predicktions, and no promises. Remembr?
