Let's back up a bit. I've been keeping a bl-g since May 2000; I am part of the LiveJournal community. I like LJ's feature-set and open-source architecture, and the neighborhood is rich in authors, animators, rock musicians and teenaged miscreants. (Russian politician Valeria Novodvorskaya, Smashed Pumpkin Billy Corgan, Venture Bros. creator Jackson Publick and sex educator Ducky DooLittle are all LiveJournal users—though, y'know, we're not really acquainted.)
That said, I haven't been considered a bl-gger until very recently. Many of the hardcore bl-ggers I've met over the years—the people who write their own code, sit on panels with Mark Frauenfelder and Ana Marie Cox—once viewed LiveJournal as the online equivalent of a coffee-klatch. To their thinking, LiveJournal's "community" element—namely, the user-created list of LJ "friends," who alone had access to the author's more personal, controversial, kinky or outright stupid entries—was a soft option. Real bl-ggers should put it all out there, I was told, or not bother to put anything out there at all. Many of them refused to link to my LJ, and not without reason—after all, a community is only as strong as its weakest link. For every Jackson Publick on LJ, there were a dozen users posting a constant stream of inane, slam-book-quality quizzes: "Which Harry Potter Character Are You?" "Which Part of the Colon are You?"
Many of these LJ users prided themselves on their friend lists, not realizing that those lists were the effect and not the cause. One starts a bl-g (in a perfect world) to communicate ideas, share experiences and enthusiasms, and to tell others where to find the really good porn; from that base, you can find friends and allies and build a posse rivaling that of celebrated posse-haver Andre the Giant.
Enter MySpace, which forgoes the lecture and puts the guest list first. Sure, MySpace has a "bl-g" feature, but few use it—and in many cases, you have to be registered with MySpace to read the thing. With social networking, the art—yes, it's an art—of creating a personal web presence is reduced to posting a handful of flattering self-portraits and party shots, lists of your favorite indie movies and screamo bands ... and those goddamn quizzes. It works with the crude efficiency of the Yellow Pages. Even I felt compelled to make a MySpace profile—if only to look up old girlfriends who done me wrong and check to see if they're having the same middle-aged crises of confidence that I am. (Ha.)
It's MySpace's ease of use—and abuse—that has allowed the service not only to clean many of the undesirables out of the bl-gosphere, but also to become the virtual base of operations for many of my friends, some of whom formerly kept bl-gs and find MySpace much less demanding of their time and energy. Pure social networking seems less substantial to me than bl-gging, just as LiveJournal must seem less substantial to those hardcore bl-ggers (who—I can only pray—aren't reading this piece. They pounce on shows of weakness).
Bl-gging is a time-sucking endeavor, a commitment. For a hot second, there was a trend that was forcing us to proselytize, to write, to create. I don't blame MySpace for making the web more like a kegger, nor do I blame podcasting for making bl-ggers into DJs or YouTube for making the web more like TV. But I will surely miss bl-gging, and the bl-gopshere, as even the most creative and dedicated of us give in to taking video of ourselves playing Pink Floyd guitar solos or reducing our degrees of Kevin Bacon down to two or fewer.
Bl-gs will continue to exist, of course. I'll continue to post in mine, and my serious bl-gger friends—who have no reason to fear my LiveJournal branding, now that so many have jumped ship—will no doubt continue to preach to the political choir of our choosing, share happy hour tips or make verbal offerings to the altars of Warren Ellis and Audacia Ray.
But the great entity that was the bl-gosphere is dead. In 10 years we'll remember it with other casualties of these end times—daily newspapers, FM radio, telephones that simply make phone calls. And maybe we'll surf past the sun-bleached carcasses of Stereogum and Gridskipper and remember the time when we could say the word "blog" proudly, piously, without that hitch in our throat. Maybe we'll remember taking down Trent Lott—albeit temporarily—and nearly getting people to see a movie with a title as stupid as Snakes on a Plane. Maybe we'll remember the city we built.