Last night I had a lively and wide-ranging conversation with author David V. Stewart on his Newpub Talk show. The billed subject was the mecha genre, but we ended up chatting about the pulps, writing, tips, and Dino Riders, among other topics.
David is always fun and interesting to talk with because he’s a modern day Renaissance man with expertise in a variety of fields. He also makes a point of continually expanding his knowledge base. It’s a rare and potent combination in this age of limitless information access and terminally incurious people.
The live show had quite a turnout, despite initial tech delays. I’d heard from other live streamers that Google put new changes to Hangouts into effect yesterday, so that may have been part of the problem. Anyway, we managed to get the ball rolling and had great fun.
Listen to the full episode!
One subject we didn’t have time to do a deep dive on was the takeover of oldpub sci fi by the dead egg brigade precipitating the death of the midlist. There’ve also been rumblings among the acolytes of the Pop Cult about fleeing social media for the safe spaces of their blogs. Are these two phenomena related?
Only time will tell, and it’s drawing breath to speak.
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"Non-stop since 1998, pal"
Yeah, the NPC bug-men have been at it for a while, though 'Whatever' has been on life support since the Twitter flu captured the Writesman of Tor.
But, '1998', you say. My, what an interesting year.
Interesting, indeed.
No doubt in my mind that blogs are the way to go. You can post whatever (no pun intended) you want and ban or not anyone you think is being an a**hole. You are also immune to outrage mobs. What's not to love?
Obviously, I prefer blogs for the reasons you stated; with one caveat: outrage mobs can still deplatform you (ask Roissy) it's just harder.
It does appear that blogs are "back". Even Ethan Ralph recently took to his long-dormant blog to pen a fiery missive.
Blogs are the only way to reach those of us who are so antisocial that even the idea of social networks turns us off. By the way, this is coming from a guy who met his wife (of almost 20 years) online.
Congratulations to you both!
Social media is not going to stay big forever, and with Oldpub flatlining these guys are going to have less places to advertise their works.
They should have been working on their blogs this whole time, though. You can't build a brand or identity solely by shitposting on twitter dot com.
It's a matter of recognizing that each is a specialized tool and understanding how to use each tool for its intended purpose.
Blogging is your long game.
Face Book is your mid-term game.
Twitter is your fruit fly attention span game.
I should say that this was the conventional wisdom in 2017. It now looks like FB will be the first to fall, not Twitter like everyone thought.
Twitter is hard mode social media and it can make a lot of money if you do it right.
There's certainly plenty of money to be had if you go the lifestyle brand route. I have no business posing as any kind of guru, though.
Is Scalzi claiming to have been blogging since blogging first existed?
I wonder if it's still the "sci-fi blog with the most traffic".
Perhaps. The garbage trucks need someplace to dump.
* beep-beep-beep-beep *
Vox Day passed him up in traffic long ago.