Sifting the tea leaves of the place of oneself in the blogosphere and in life is entirely a mug's game. Only idiots care. Yet, I am an idiot. It struck me yesterday when I reviewed the detailed commentary James Bow has written on the 2008 Canadian Blog Awards. Admittedly, it has been some time since I was nominated for these sorts of things and I can take my ego massaging from other sources but something struck me when I read the candidates for Best Blog in Canada - and realized I never heard of any of them. They may well have never heard of me either as they were blogging in a different way, not using the cut, paste and comment format that I along with most Oldie Olson bloggers use. They are pretty good, too.
Then, I got fiddling with the settings on Google Analytics to figure out what that could tell me. One of new features with mt bloggy systems upgrades is the server stats are gone. Once upon a time, back around the summer of 2005 or so, I think I could count almost 11,000 visits a day to this blog according to mt server stats. Now Google Analytics tells me that on 23 November 2008 Gen x 40 had 118 visits. The beer blog gets almost seven times that traffic now. I know it is all apples to oranges. Back in the day, every bot and spam was counted and now RSS readers are left out. Yet the message is clear. I write on this site for Hans and a few others. Yet I write and I enjoy the writing.
But it isn't really just about the blog, is it. We all know that. David sent me a link by Twitter the other day that proves it. In itself, even the choice of medium was telling. He didn't leave a comment because blogs are really so 2004. The link he sent me was to a Washington Post article entitled "The Dumbest Generation: The Kids Are Alright. But Their Parents ..." in which my cohort, early Generation X, are shown to be the biggest bunch of losers in recent decades, maybe centuries. Now, to be clear, we knew that already. That is the whole point of me and my peeps. The slacker generation was not a slacker generation out of choice. Growing up in the era of recession after recession, there was no point in effort. But the article is perhaps a little to close to the bone on this core generational fact:
Whatever you call them (I'll just call them early Xers), the numbers are clear: Compared with every other birth cohort, they have performed the worst on standardized exams, acquired the fewest educational degrees and been the least attracted to professional careers. In a word, they're the dumbest. Obviously, we're talking averages. No one would apply the word "dumb" to Barack Obama (born in 1961) or Timothy F. Geithner, his nominee for secretary of the Treasury (born in the same month). Yet the president-elect himself has written eloquently about how hard it was for him and his peers to obtain a serious education during their dazed-and-confused teen years. Like it or not, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (born in 1964), who stumbled over basic civics facts during her vice presidential run, is more representative of this group. Early Xers are the least bookish CEOs and legislators the United States has seen in a long while. They prefer sound bites over seminars, video clips over articles, street smarts over lofty diplomas. They are impatient with syntax and punctuation and citations...
Ouch. Kick in the goolies ouch. Yet here I am in pajamas, waylayed by a cold my grandfather would not recognize as a cold, writing on a blog no one reads, torturing the language as my grade 8 teacher told me I did and sluffing off of the things I ought to be doing on a Sunday morning. I am as I ought to be: looking forward to a game on the TV so that I can nap through more than half of it as the snow collects outside, unshovelled.
Comments
Damian - December 7, 2008 12:38 PM
Typical Alan: here you think you're "torturing the language", when what you're really doing is writing one of the best pieces I've seen from you in awhile.
Well put.
Alan - December 7, 2008 12:48 PM
I am just an ego in search of validation.
Renee - December 7, 2008 1:02 PM
I feel validated, in that I'm not the only one whose stats have dropped =) It's going to be a long winter. It's also nice to have the validation of the fact that I'm not actually that smart, it's that other people are that dumb... wait, is that actually nice? Probably not. Is it even true? Hmm.
Renee - December 7, 2008 1:02 PM
(not you, I mean the averages. I too am not shoveling my driveway at this VERY MOMENT.)
Robert Paterson - December 7, 2008 3:53 PM
I read you Alan - Rob
Alan - December 7, 2008 7:41 PM
I would point out that I consider myself the Everyman in this regard
Renee - December 7, 2008 8:37 PM
Aren't those law degrees, like, a cinch to get? ;)
Alan - December 7, 2008 8:51 PM
Hardest thing? Getting in. Second hardest thing? Putting up with competitive classmates losing it. The rest is just voluminous school work.
Ben (The Tiger) - December 7, 2008 9:00 PM
Law school was too much for me to stick it.
I think I'm still in good standing, but I ain't ever going back...
Alan - December 7, 2008 9:05 PM
I know I will never do it again. Oddly, though, I don't have dreams about it. I do have dreams that someone noticed I actually failed grade 10 math or grade 4 altogether and I have to go back and take it again. Cold sweats and screams at waking.
Renee - December 7, 2008 9:54 PM
I have dreams about my coworkers. They're all sitting around a table changing my carefully-thought-out hierarchical menu structures. Maybe I need a vacation.
Renee - December 7, 2008 10:07 PM
Anyway, my point remains: you can't be the everyman in this regard because you're one of the minority of your cohort who actually did get an advanced degree. Also, you're not USAnian. :)
Renee - December 7, 2008 10:08 PM
(I should correct myself - not necessarily minority, but less-than-the-others-ity)
Jay Currie - December 7, 2008 10:15 PM
Well I read you Alan...but I'm old, pre-1960 and find things like grammar consoling.
In a funny way anyone who is not writing a blog because they enjoy the writing of it is a bit deranged. Sure its fun to have your stats go to the moon (or, more accurately, 20% of Kate on a slow day). But that can't be the point.
One of the things which has happened in the Canadian blogosphere is that the partisanship has gone way up. I regularly have righty pals wonder at my sanity when I admit that I read the Dawg. (So far they have not twigged to my putting Renee on my blogroll; but they no doubt will.) A few years ago it was quite possible to engage with people on the left or right: now, with a few exceptions, such engagement brings out everything from Bush Derangement Syndrome to just viciously partisan attacks of the form "you are a lying liar neocon ****sucking dimwith" (and that's just truewest on my own blog). Not surprising that traffic is down.
However, as I often remind myself: when I published a free, deadtree literary and political magazine it cost me $4000.00 a month to reach 10,000 readers - even in a slow month I hit twice that for free.
Besides, I have a ton of fun.
Renee - December 7, 2008 10:16 PM
Good god. But I'm a socialist. Isn't that catching??
Ben (The Tiger) - December 7, 2008 10:21 PM
I keep and feed my lefty readers.
I have fun -- and Canadian politics, my main topic right now, happens to be a lot of fun in December 2008...
Alan - December 7, 2008 11:12 PM
I really can't figure out if I am left or right. Fiscally, I should be right as I believe in spending no more than revenue but I have never found a right wing party that actually believed in that. Socially, I should be left but I am more and more interested in duty so if I am left, I am that left that was the left that Grannie knew, my true inspiration as the nation's leftist libertarian. That being the case, I can't bear the echo chambers of the partisan - whether bloggers or actual party hacks.
Oddly and much to my surprise, I find the a sub-set of rightists more pleasant company than any I have found on the left as I think there is less respect for diatribe and more discourse. As Ben says, I keep and feed my civilized right leaning readers.
Renee - December 7, 2008 11:20 PM
Ben: yes, I hadn't thought about it, but it is SO MUCH FUN right now. I actually chortled the other day. Chortled! I haven't chortled in ages and ages. Canadian politics, I love you.
Alan: It's true that a favourite past-time of a lot of us lefties is getting together and complaining about rightists and feeling superior and occasionally yelling, along with disagreeing-on-pedantic-points and splitting into sub-factions. There's much more agreement on the right on a lot of things. But I'm not convinced that a more externally-cohesive worldview is necessarily the best idea... on the other hand, maybe I just love arguing about shit.
TRex - December 8, 2008 4:27 AM
The Canadian Blog Awards is how I found Dawg, you and others, random Googling had initially led me to SDA which was a real disappointment in spite of its popularity, so many idiot commentators and no culling of the herd! I’ve been an expat some years now and had completely lost perspective on my home country and when I decided to reconnect Google Searches were a hit and miss method, but I did find the 2007 Awards which opened things up for me.
I look forward to this yearly event but only for the reason mentioned. Still, I hope your numbers rise, maybe the addition of some p0rn? ;)
David Janes - December 8, 2008 7:42 AM
If you're not getting off on this, pr0n won't help you.
Alan - December 8, 2008 8:55 AM
"...so many idiot commentators and no culling of the herd..."
Ve have certain vays to deal vith such tinks.
Hans - December 8, 2008 9:05 AM
I think there are some other blog awards in Canada where none of the same blogs are nominated and nobody has even heard of the blog awards you talk about. Anyway, I'm boycotting all blog awards until they have a "best island blog" category. It is interesting what you say about the early GenXers having faced recession after recession so its no wonder they/we all stopped trying. Just like the Cold War memories you have written of occasionally, its not just that kids today don't get it, its that those of us who do remember don't get it, can't explain it and neither the kids nor the boomers want to hear about it or understand it anyway. I know lots of people a little older than me who are undereducated and have a history of underemployment. A lot of people my exact age are having babies now at the same time as their 30-year-old counterparts. I chalk up that 10 year delay to the same early GenX malaise mentioned in the Washington Post. Even Obama was delayed in starting a family.
Una - December 8, 2008 12:24 PM
I love your blog. Intelligent, well written and funny.
Matthew Fletcher - December 8, 2008 6:10 PM
Careful Alan. When I started writing posts like this (considering my own irrelevance in the blogosphere) it was the beginning of the end.
Jay is right about the partisanship - that is one of the things that drove me to quit. Finishing school and getting a real job also helped. I don't know how you people work and keep up with blogging - doesn't seem very slacker to me.
Alan - December 8, 2008 7:49 PM
Oh, I've written one of these every year. I was mainly trying to figure out how to string the three ideas together. Oddly responsive response.
Matthew Fletcher - December 9, 2008 1:32 PM
A futher note:
Yours is the ONLY non-professional-journalist blog I read. All others have fallen from my interest; I don't even click on links you post to other blogs, yet I still read this one.
Alan - December 9, 2008 1:47 PM
You can get help for that!
;-)