Plogging?

Will this blogger become a "plogger?"

Yes, it seems like the digital age continuously adds new words to our lexicon. That's because it does. Languages have always added new words as new experiences arise and our current situation is no different. Perhaps the additions are happening at a bit more accelerated pace, but that's likely debatable. Where is all this circumlocution going? Well it's like this...

Next week I am speaking about blogging at a gathering of writers and so the subject has been on my mind (Hey! I'm blogging about blogging! How meta!) I've honestly wondered about the future of the genre of blogging. Is it long for this world? That might sound like a strange question, given that web logging (what was eventually concatenated to "blogging") has only been around in the mainstream for only 15 years or so, but in an age where emojis take the place of words, tweets are limited to 140 characters, and apps like Instagram and SnapChat are social media du jour, where does that leave the blog? After all, blogs are from those days predating Facebook when you didn't have a go-to location to find someone's daily thoughts and bromides, and streams of photos of what they had to eat that day. Add in the fact that tl;dr (too long;didn't read) is the credo of many, just how much longer will people read blogs?

Then I saw this article in Wired. Facebook has announced that it is enhancing its little-used Notes feature, allowing users to write longer, "more beautiful and customizable posts." Twitter is expected to debut features that allow users to tweet messages longer than 140 characters. The writer of the article asserts that in time, bloggers will abandon blog sites (such as this one) and migrate to blogging on platforms...or "plogging."

True? Might be. What I appreciated most of all in the article was this statement: "Because, despite the everyday tweetstorm that rains down on our heads, words still matter." If Facebook and Twitter and sites like Medium (see the article) are working to allow for longer chunks of text, then there must be a demand for it.

People, Americans especially it seems, tend to vacillate. Something like STEM education is proclaimed as the only type of curriculum that should matter and then everyone's eggs go into that basket. Suddenly, we realize that reading and writing skills aren't what they used to be and that we might have lost something in our newfound rapture. Then, things move back towards the middle. That might be what's happening with blogging and longer texts. Minds might, just might, be getting tired of tiny quips and status updates accompanied by pics. There are people who are wanting something more substantial, missing the kind of content that blogs deliver.

So will I "plog?" Will I move ESE in its entirety to a platform such as Facebook? I'll wait and see what the new features are like and if indeed there is the likelihood of my writing reaching a wider audience. I think that every writer wants that. What I can tell you for certain is that my blogging will continue. I look forward to it each and every day, defragging my mental hard drive through writing on these posts. After all, it's so much easier to deal with the subjects of ESE than it is my day-to-day life.

Beats downing tumblers of scotch...which is what I used to do.


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