LEP's post about the demise of chess blogging caught my attention. I've seen it too. I am a part of this falling off. Earlier this year (March-April-ish) my attention to chess blogging (reading and writing) decreased significantly.
In my case, there are number of reasons why. Right now I'm beginning to finish off an 18-month job position that requires me to work shifts. Hopefully I'll be done with this job early next year. The shift work has greatly disrupted my on-line chess activities. I mostly play correspondance chess now.
My family is continuing to grow up. Two kids are on school, one is in pre-K. They have a lot of activities going on and that takes a lot of time.
The last reason why I've decreased time with the chess blogging scene is I've sorta lost interest. I want to spend time on chess, but with so many other "distractions" I've not thought a whole lot about chess (not like I used to). Also, the Knights Errant seems dead. There isn't so much attention to them any more ... and nothing new (on-line) has replaced their gusto and fervor for chess.
One other thought occured to me ... I continue to peruse the chess blogs via bloglines. I agree with LEP's 2nd point ... there is a LOT of chess content on-line now. Information over-load might be another reason for the drop in interest. The vast majority of posts are *yawwwn* boring ... seen that, not new. But once in a while, there is a great post and catches my attention. I used to do "Chess Around the Net" posts and try to find out-of-the-ordinary stuff about chess. I still attempt this exercise, but more often than not, the stuff I find is old-news or not really blog-worthy. I might try it again tonight just for kicks.
Anway ... that is my two cents on the subject.
You know, I was wondering whether anyone would take offense to that post.
ReplyDeleteIt's blazingly hard to be novel nowadays. I'd like to see what you come up with the "Chess Around the Net", even if it is to say "there's nothing, really."
thank you. agreed for sure.
ReplyDeletemy answer is to take some real time off, then afterwards, see what is real and which endures, and not only 'wants saying' but, in my case, 'must be saying'.
nice to see the bold RSS feed pop up with your name, so i hastened here, too.
take care, dk
It is strange how little discussion of the Circles there is in the Knights Errant these days. Back in the day, they were hard-core, doing it the old fashioned way with CT-Art (none of this wimpy CTB crap, none of this hand-fed Chessimo), and the focus was fairly pure. It made things sort of incestuous and uninteresting to "outsiders", but they did their tactics! OTOH, there have been times with as few as four active Knights, and it comes and goes.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if, in ten years, blogging will be looked at as passé.
Old faces dissepear from the surface. New, yet to be discovered, faces search they way in the blogosphere.
ReplyDeleteWith other words i think there is still the same amount of blogging going on but the old faces leave an emptyness that doesn't get filled because the new faces still have to let other know of their excistence.