Another minor anniversary

I’ve had some sort of presence on the world wide waste of time for about twenty years now, starting with a website on Geocities.com.¹ Fifteen years ago today I launched my first solo weblog, after participating briefly in a group blog. I eventually abandoned it when the blogging software was abandoned by its originators, but not before starting a replacement on another host. There were further abandon-and-replace cycles over the years, but I’ve always had a weblog going since 2003. Nothing remains of the first weblog except the items in the “ancient texts” in the sidebar at right, but everything since then is preserved in the archives.² I wrote a brief history of my blogging five years ago for the tenth anniversary, and there’s little to add to that.

Is running a weblog continuously for fifteen years a great achievement? Hardly. Just post something every once in a while, and you can call yourself a “blogger.” Keep doing it for years and years, and the word count will build steadily to a superficially impressive magnitude.

Maintaining one worth reading regularly is another matter. There are many bloggers out there who have written far more, and better, than me (though probably very few have as eccentric a range of interests). And then there’s Charles G. Hill, who makes all the others seem like beginners.

What I’m mindful of today are the many memorable bloggers who faded away or disappeared. Remember The Hatemonger’s Quarterly? The last post from the crack young staff is almost nine years old. How about Strange Herring? It’s gone, probably forever, and all my links to Anthony Sacramone’s wisecracks are dead.³ The Shrine of the Holy Whapping still exists but hasn’t been updated in years, as is the case with Quenta Nârwenion. I rarely suffer from nostalgia — I don’t have much to be nostalgic for — but I do miss these, and the many others who are no longer active.⁴

1. Remember Geocities.com? It ceased to exist years ago, except in Japan.
2. Though much of the older art is missing and many of the old links are defunct.
3. Sacramone currently writes many articles for various websites and probably actually gets paid for them, but for a while his weblog was great fun.
4. I miss Steven most of all, but that’s another matter.