When I converted to Google Reader it was a heady experience, scrolling with my teensy button on my mouse, zipping through a hundred or more blogs in twenty minutes. I hated it when they stacked up and so learned to click on "Mark All as Read." Wiped away were the numbers, the bold typeface that said, "You aren't finished here."Then on one of the blogs I follow, The Year in Pictures, the blogger James Danziger wrote a post a titled "Listen Up!" a few weeks back, asking where everyone had gone--where were the comments?
The question is why are people not leaving comments these days? Or maybe the request is: please leave comments whenever you feel even the slightest bit moved to. They are really what keeps a blogger going. I would have thought that this week there would have been more than one comment on the Gursky photo or more than two comments on the amazing Narduzzi picture of the Byblos Art Hotel.In the torrent of comments left at that time a couple of people mentioned the fact that now his blog was in their Google Reader:
Maybe it's the weather...
I think more and more people are using Google reader for looking at their favorite blogs. To leave a comment you then actually have to make the effort to open the blog itself. Maybe that has something to do with it. Nevertheless, I have been puzzled myself by the lack of comments on your blog. Because it's such a great blog, personal and informative, and very generous. Please keep it up. We're out there.I've been thinking about this one too, as the comments on this blog seem so few and far between now, yet I hear that people do read and enjoy the writings (or they're polite enough not to comment when it's a droll day).
So I've made a concerted effort to use the Google Reader tool a little more sparingly. I like seeing the blogroll on the side of my OccasionalPiece page, clicking to read someone's blog and being in their world, with their photos and headers and typefaces, rather a driveby reading in an aggregator's world of same type, same style, same abbreviated presence on my electronic page. I also like when I visit other people's pages, seeing what interests them in their Blogrolls and clicking through on a few of their links. More is not always the way to go. Maybe it's my own effort to slow the whole process down, to live in this current time and to interact, internet-style, with one human story at a time.
4 comments:
I like getting comments and commenting. But sometimes it's also nice to read and think and NOT comment, but to leave my thoughts inside my head or inside my living room, not pasted publicly on the internet. The public nature of the internet changes what I can say, so commenting always takes much more time than it should.
I do enjoy your blog, even when I don't comment. Please continue to write when you feel like it. I'll be reading.
i agree with what artax said.
sometimes, i feel the need to chew
over in my head what i've seen
or read before making a comment.
most of the time i can't articulate my thoughts or crystallise them concisely.
the year in pictures is also on my blogroll - it's wonderful.
i just sent an email to scout
tufankjian to say how much i loved
her work.
thanks too - for your post :-)
I agree that Reader was a plot devised by Google to divert us from Blogger. I do like reading better in Blogger but sometimes the technology of URLs is beyond me and Reader works. Keep it up. I like being in your world even if only for a few minutes.
I use Reader but it is not nearly as satisfying as going directly to the blog and reading. And this idea of commenting is one that I struggle with often. I want to be writing because I want to write but the lure of the comments is a strong one.
I am enjoying this blog - thanks for point me over here.
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