To Smooch (Not Smite): A Review/Analysis of Polygon’s PeaceCraft

All images in this post were captured from the PeaceCraft videos on Polygon's YouTube channel.

            Admittedly, I have had little previous experience with either World of Warcraft or the McElroy brothers and their various online ventures. While I have no plans to get into the former, I have started to get more familiar with the latter after listening to some episodes of the three brothers’ comedy advice podcast—My Brother, My Brother, And Me—and watching the web series of the same name developed by Seeso. The McElroys as a family just seem very funny, charming, and, above all, sweet. In a very shrill, angry, cynical world, there is something engaging about the general sense of sweetness and happiness the brothers seem to bring to their projects. Today I would like to focus on some of the work of the “sweet baby brother” Griffin McElroy, who, in addition to his work with the other brothers, also creates several video series for the site Polygon that deal with video games in some way. The first of these that I watched was Touch the Skyrim, a series in which Griffin attempts to essentially break the massively popular fantasy role-playing game by altering it with mods that co-host Nick Robinson must try to identify. Such modifications to the game have included: giant bears, the ability to stop time, “sexy” outfits, transforming the entire world into an undersea paradise, and adding the option to make any characters in the game kiss, which just gets even weirder when modded in characters like Sonic the Hedgehog get involved. Across the two “seasons” of the show so far, Griffin and Nick have built some loose narratives around their various mods, though the series is ultimately less about story and more about hijinks like humping Batman in a cavern filled with giant Sonics. The series I want to focus on here is a solo effort for Griffin that revolves around an attempted nonviolent run through the world of World of Warcraft using a gnome rogue named “Raandyy” (Both “Randy” and “Randyy” were already taken).

            The premise for this “PeaceCraft” series on the first episode on YouTube reads, “Join Griffin McElroy and Raandyy on an unforgettable journey through Azeroth in PeaceCraft, a new Polygon video series. Can sweet Raandyy find a way through the various checkpoints Griffin has arbitrary [sic] established for him in way-too-high-level zones without killing a single creature?” In essence, Griffin starts a new game on a PvP server with the intent to guide his rogue (so chosen for its learned stealth abilities) through various zones of the game without committing any violent acts. Griffin himself notes that pacifism in Warcraft is not new or entirely unsupported, so what makes this series special is that trademark McElroy sweetness and the way that his goals for Raandyy do not conform to those of the game. This is more of a cross-country marathon than it is a quest to save the realm, and with no attempt to make Raandyy appropriately-leveled for the challenges he faces (the goal is to cover distance, not grind out levels), the approach puts the character at a greater disadvantage than that faced by other characters with similar nonviolent intentions. The PvP elements in particular just makes the world even more dangerous for sweet Raandyy.  

  

            PeaceCraft is rife with comedy: Raandyy running around with no pants on, hiding behind trees to try to harvest plants when enemies’ backs are turned, running howling into a town with an enemy in tow to die while other players do not notice or refuse to intervene. And then there are moments that I found really affecting like when early in the game Raandyy ends up begging for in-game currency, again, from largely seemingly disinterested players. The tone is comedic, but the subtext is powerful because of the real world echoes of poverty and because the structure of the game is literally such that Raandyy cannot start to level up and progress without experience, which he cannot get without killing unless he has the money to pay to learn a trade. The hump is a real one imposed by both the game’s systems and by the limitations (no killing) Griffin has set on his own run. It is both funny but also very serious, and it makes for a more compelling narrative given how flush with currency Raandyy later becomes thanks to the contributions of his “fan-diies.”

Another source of comedy in PeaceCraft: the editing and the use of visuals and music beyond what is "native" to the game. Here we see Raandyy celebrating leveling up.

            Similar mixes of humor and genuine pathos arise thanks to Raandyy’s consistent characterization as both nonviolent and kind. He blows kisses to most of the people he meets; he refuses to kill (even by engaging in such an innocuous video game staple like fishing); he makes peace by laying out a blanket, umbrella, and picnic basket and encouraging other players to do the same; he tries to avoid being killed by other players by lying on the ground; he cheers on other players involved in fights even if he will not fight himself. The nonviolent premise of the show translates to character traits for Raandyy, and Griffin role-plays as him with consistency and some sincerity. This fundamental kindness is very “on brand” for the McElroys. The nonviolence of the run comes to head in the most recent (as of this writing) episode of the show when Raandyy and his followers go to a carnival and get into an arena. Although some players try to practice peace, others are killing. One in particular kills Raandyy multiple times, resulting in Griffin’s decision to have Raandyy “do a hit” on the person in question. Although some “fan-diies” try to hold Raandyy back verbally and by transforming him into animals, he eventually succeeds in attempting his hit… only to miss because the character is so under-leveled. A second attempt at a hit moments later produces the same results, and seeing the game’s own systems ultimately serve to further characterize Raandyy as someone who is not only opposed to violence but also incapable of inflicting it even when he tries only adds to the sense of him as a consistent character. It is funny but also actually makes sense within the narrative Griffin is building as the series goes on.

PeaceCraft is highly edited, both for time (since each episode is only about 20 minutes long) and for humorous effect.

            One of the things that makes PeaceCraft appealing to me in ways that Touch the Skyrim is not is the way that the former series does not so much attempt to break the game as it does try to examine the ways in which the game’s systems can be used in non-traditional ways. At its most simple it asks: How effectively can a person move through the game using only non-violent sources of experience and money? Of course, because this is an MMORPG, most sources of experience and money involve killing, either solo or as part of a team, so Raandyy’s adventure reveals how slim the pickings can be for players who might try to test those limits. The character is behind the progression curve at every turn since his primary sources of income and experience are picking flowers, harvesting minerals, and selling both. Consequently, Raandyy is under-leveled (usually dramatically so) for whatever zone he happens to be in, resulting in his being one- or two-shot by almost every enemy or hostile player he encounters. Again—This pushes the limits of the game’s systems. What was meant to be a straight-forward RPG where the player moves through an area mowing down enemies at or around their current level turns into a sort of stealth or puzzle game at times, where Griffin uses Raandyy’s rogue class power of cloaking (once he has earned it) and/or the environment itself to try to gather resources or just avoid enemies. In a forest filled with deadly spiders, for example, Raandyy takes to a nearby river to swim through the zone, only to discover that that is not a totally safe route either.

Each episode tracks Raandyy's progress along a certain "leg" of his journey.

            Oftentimes, progress through a region in PeaceCraft seems to slow to a crawl as, unable to avoid enemies entirely, Griffin instead has to resort to fudging his way through using the game’s respawn system. At times he can count the number of steps he takes forward from one death to another on one hand. No doubt this was arduous to record—especially since there is a cooldown on respawns—but it is highly engaging to watch: not only because of the humor of the action and that comes from Griffin’s running commentary, but also because it made me think about the nature of games. It was interesting to me because I thought about how video games like Warcraft are, to some extent, the extension of the imaginative play of children (which has few set rules) and the sort of traditional role-playing games that have rules but also allow for imaginative play when the GM is willing and the stats and roll of the dice allow for it. Warcraft, though ostensibly a “role-playing” game, only allows mechanical role-play within very strict limitations. Simply put: The game’s goal for the player, regardless of their imagined role, is levelling up (most often through killing), and the goal of peacefully maneuvering through the world on a cross-country trek is not as well-supported. Add to that that Griffin’s run ignores much of the “content” of the game—another goal of an RPG like this one: to complete as many quests as possible and to advance what story there is—in favor of a self-selected goal of simply reaching certain milestones on the map. PeaceCraft is less Warcraft than it is Forrest Gump—and that comparison becomes especially apt when you consider how the narrative of the series evolves once the fans get directly involved in Raandyy’s quest.

            Superficially, PeaceCraft reminds me of Forrest Gump because of its initial premise: Lovable Simpleton Runs Around The World. Like the sequence from the movie, however, what starts out as a solitary journey eventually turns into one filled with other hangers-on. I said before that PeaceCraft does not break the game like Touch the Skyrim does (with mods), but once Raandyy starts getting generous care packages from his “fan-diies,” he begins to acquire copious amounts of gold and other items (like armor sets) that he otherwise would likely never have acquired on his own during the run, thus bending, if not breaking, the game to some extent. He is able to use the gold, for example, to buy up a bunch of items from a vendor, who then, after sufficient patronage, offers Raandyy a cool motorcycle mount. The mount ends up not moving significantly faster through the world than Raandyy could have on foot—particularly with his new impressive stash of swiftness potions courtesy of his fans—but it is glamorous, and its easy acquisition stands out in stark contrast to the early moments of the series when Griffin was forced to beg for money and sell Raandyy’s pants to make ends meet. The involvement of the “fan-diies” fundamentally changes the limitations and tone of run, and the way that they steadily play bigger roles in the series adds to the narrative appeal.

Raandyy checks the mail from his "fan-diies."

            The “fan-diies’” involvement begins small—with some fan letters and donations and the creation of characters that riff on the name “Raandyy”—but slowly expands to include multiple player factions that in some way use Raandyy’s name (Some are evil, of course), an inbox that takes increasingly long periods of time to empty during each episode, and a physical presence that enables Raandyy to accomplish what is arguably his most daring feat of the series so far, which is to infiltrate the hostile Horde capital and “smooch” their ruler. The entire sequence, which at one point involves Raandyy climbing onto a follower’s mount and then parachuting onto the roof of the capitol, plays so well mechanically and narratively when you consider that this dynamic with the fans began with a few letters and some reluctant interaction with one or two people in the wilderness.

Raandyy dropping in for a smooch through the power of teamwork.

            The whole story arc of the series first takes a turn, though, when a small group of “fan-diies” blocks for Raandyy as he tries to evade a hostile and make his next checkpoint on his journey in a town called Booty Bay. While the other players draw off the opposition, Griffin is able to race Raandyy into the town. In the episodes following this team-up, the “fan-diies” have only grown in number and in their significance to the narrative. There is the aforementioned gentle assault on the Horde, followed by an episode that is roughly the equivalent of the beach/hot spring episodes of an anime series, where Raandyy and friends simply go to a carnival and pal around. At this point, the future goals for the series seem to have shifted. Raandyy made his way across an entire continent on foot and mostly unaided, but the move to another continent and the carnival sequence have all been “fan-diies”-focused. The question becomes whether Raandyy will resume running around the world and, if so, what role his followers will play. Like any series, however, more escalation moving further away from the initial premise seems likely since Griffin noted after pulling off the smooch raid against the Horde that this was actually a little easier than he thought. With the help of the “fan-diies,” he has a lot of resources available to consider other self-selected goalposts for Raandyy to reach. One man’s quest to simply circumnavigate the world of Warcraft peacefully has evolved, even if the core values—of peace and kindness—have largely remained unchanged despite the more ambiguous “peaceful" characteristic becoming a bit more concrete with the decision to make Raandyy a vegan.

            Finally, I would like to say that one reason PeaceCraft and its creative use of existing game systems to accomplish imaginative, player-created goals appeals to me so much is that it reminds me of my childhood—when I knew that I wanted to make games but did not have the know-how or software. What I did instead was to sometimes create new narratives inside existing games like The Legend of Zelda and Spyro, sometimes for my younger brother and sometimes just for myself. What is really affecting to me about my experience as a child and about watching PeaceCraft is the way that videogames, which present limiting imaginative experiences with set parameters, can still be bent to some extent to the imagination of players in a manner reminiscent of the most basic state of “play,” where the only true limit is the player’s (or players’) imagination and where things like narrative and the goals for the game are not imposed but changeable. There is just something childlike and fun (albeit with a lot more swearing) to be found in PeaceCraft, which seems to find genuine elements of play in the process of playing a game with clear and obvious expectations for an entirely different sort of interaction with its world and systems. I do not think any substantial knowledge of World of Warcraft is necessary to enjoy the show either, so I would not worry too much about the MMORPG angle if you, like me, do not know much of anything about it. I started watching the series on a lark and ended up catching up on all six existing episodes in a single sitting. If you are at all into this sort of content (people talking over videogames on the internet), PeaceCraft is absolutely worth checking out. It is immensely charming, sweet, and features a fun narrative developing in real-time.

Link to the first episode of PeaceCraft: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqEGdSEOAis  

You’re only good until you’re not / You’re only certain until you’re not

“You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” – Harvey Dent, The Dark Knight (2008)

            On the internet it’s very likely that not even dying could stop you from becoming a villain these days. “Call-out culture” is now a part of that digital ecosystem and, in essence, “refers to the tendency among progressives, radicals, activists, and community organizers to publically name instances or patterns of oppressive behaviour and language use by others. People can be called out for statements and actions that are sexist, racist, abeliest, and [etc.]”[1] There is potential in calling out truly dangerous actions—such as abuse and assault; “like confronting a rapist, for example”—to hold the perpetrators accountable and to publically call attention to their behavior in such a way so as other potential victims know to avoid them; nevertheless, there are serious problems with call-out culture as a form of “political critique.”[2] Because calling someone out is a highly public event thanks to the social media platforms that enable the culture, the act is never private and is tantamount to “a public performance where people can demonstrate their wit or how pure their politics are.”[3] There are definitely problems with even a seemingly justified call-out, but the issue of a “statute of limitations,” say, on statements of a political nature previously made by a person raises its own questions. 

            As the second article quoted above suggests, calling attention to harmful behaviors and actionable acts of violence is one thing, and making something potentially hurtful, insensitive, or uninformed someone said years ago the evidence in a trial of that person’s current politics is another altogether. Oftentimes, however, this latter type of squabble seems to be the focus of call-out culture. This is the reason why it can be difficult to answer the question “Who do we actually like and trust?” (or, “Who is really good?”) when browsing the tweets or blogs of socially- and politically-conscious people. It seems everyone has some dirt in their past that eventually gets called out, forcing us to decide if that person was ever really as “good” as they appeared. It’s a difficult matter to parse generally. For example, I use the term “good” here as a last resort. What other, better descriptor is there for the something about that person that shifts the minute an old tweet or blog post or reblog emerges from their past? Especially when the material is years old, how much weight should it carry with regard to our current perceptions of that person? How much does it actually speak to who that person is now and what they believe? Is it out of line to expect the person in question to apologize years after the fact for something they said or thought before? I don’t have an answer—nor, I suspect, does anyone else. What I do know is that The Dark Knight was more or less right: You’re only good/a hero until you’re not.

            Ultimately, call-out culture is only related to the topic I actually want to address in this post. I want to talk about the supposed “controversy” surrounding the news that some incoming freshmen at Duke University refused to read Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home (as a common reading experience book) on moral grounds. My immediate reaction to this news item was to post to Facebook and mock the fact that it was a news item at all: “‘Extre extre! Incoming college freshmen tend to bring conservative views with them!’ (Since when is this news and/or surprising to anyone?)” After posting that initial response, however, I started to think about how this non-news could be used to address larger issues of personal and political expression, knowledge, and certainty. I still think that this individual story is a virtual non-issue—“some” students objected to the book; “several” declined to read it; even the sites running a story seem to suspect that there’s nothing remarkable here given that people object to things like this all the time, and a student not doing the reading? That’s not breaking news.

            What I do think is interesting and noteworthy about this story is how it lends itself to a larger discussion—namely, whether any of the names attached to the story who objected to Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel/memoir Fun Home for its open discussion and depiction of sexuality (and especially homosexuality) will one day find the things they said now with such certainty coming back to bite them in a call-out. Let me say upfront that this isn’t me suggesting that that might be comeuppance of some kind. My natural inclination to mock aside, I take the issues surrounding this news story seriously. It raises the important question of at what point anyone ought to make their personal and/or political views public in any way. 

            I was already thinking about this topic because I recently got a new job and in the process of completing my required training came across the statement that no one should ever post anything to a social media platform that they wouldn’t want displayed on a banner. That sounds good and seems to make a lot of sense, but it also ignores the fact that sometimes what you would want held high on a standard one day does not inspire the same confidence days, weeks, months, and especially years later. We are often very certain about things at various points in our lives only to find that certainty challenged down the road. Part of being human is learning, growing, and changing. If we generally agree that our progress is forward toward a fully-developed human being, then the old ideas or certainties we leave in our wake may no longer apply to the new model. The problem is that internet culture preserves (and sometimes resurrects) these old ideas down the road, and what can we do? It’s true that what we post to the internet stays on the internet indefinitely somewhere, but, again, what’s one to do about that? At what point is anyone (college freshman or otherwise) allowed near a computer? We want our ideals on a banner, and we want the community that comes with rallying under shared ideals.

            To return to the specific case of the Duke students, however, I think that the college seems to have taken the proper, educational track with the “controversy.” At least, that seems to be the case based on what a member of the summer reading book selection committee had to say on the issue: “I would encourage them [students who disagree with the book] to talk about why they chose to read it or not.”[4] Although I did see comments on the story to the effect that the students should be indirectly punished in some way with a quiz or that they should more or less gut it out, it’s much more effective to make this a teachable moment rather than mete out some form of punishment to force them into broadening their perspective whether they like it or not. Specifically, I think that this is an opportunity to foster critical thinking. It’s easy to see student responses that accuse Duke of indirectly peer pressuring people into reading the book, or that suggest the university simply does not know that students with conservative views exist, as worthy of scorn; in fact, in a national culture that is becoming increasingly (though only gradually) more progressive-minded, it’s easy to look at the shock—“I thought to myself, ‘What kind of school am I going to?’”—and perform something akin to a call-out where all sorts of liberal and educated minds tee off of these kids in particular and off the very concept of a sexuality-averse conservative Christian faith at large by wittily, scornfully suggesting that they need perspective or to wake up and realize their squeamishness is the result of religious dogma and a doctrine that’s becoming obsolete even in the religious community.[5] It’s easy to do that, but it’s also wrong, and that kind of aggressive response tends to only make people of any creed retreat and go on the defensive rather than feel like voicing and further exploring their ideas is safe. 

            While I certainly don’t agree with people who claim that Christians are oppressed in the United States, I do think we don’t do much to not support such claims when our response to those familiar-sounding words of Biblical censure is to mock or insist that they are completely, utterly wrong. Is religion a crutch? Does it serve only to keep people docile to institutions by suggesting that the rewards are coming not in this world (that belongs to the institutions) but in the next for all those who are appropriately penitent? It suffices for the purposes of this argument simply to acknowledge that religion means a lot to people. For many people (myself included), it played a key, foundational role in their lives. They’ve defined themselves by it and shaped their worldviews through it. Demanding that they just give that up and learn better isn’t a productive use of time—particularly in an educational setting. 

            There are certainly folks to the right and left of center politically who would argue that the purpose of college is to “liberalize” students (though they would say as much with very different intentions and intonation). It’s simply true that many freshmen come to college with a more conservative outlook that doesn’t last all four years. Christian films like God’s Not Dead make the case for the right that the left (namely liberal atheists) are out to tempt or coerce their children away from the Truth. That’s simply not the case, though. At least, in my experience, that’s not the case, nor is the purpose of college to “liberalize.” Colleges don’t churn out little Judith Butlers and Friedrich Nietzsches. To my mind the purpose of college is to teach critical thinking and to task students with answering questions more thoroughly while also asking more questions of things they take as certainties (of which religion is only one). Now, uncertainty itself can be a kind of mistaken certainty, but that’s not really the matter at hand. What is is that it’s not all that surprising for the new Duke students who object to Bechdel’s work to do so because it “[conflicts] with their personal and religious beliefs.”[6] It’s also not the college’s job to take those beliefs away from them, strictly speaking, but it is its job to suggest that this is only one of many perspectives on the text and to ask that the concerned parties get beyond knee-jerk reactions of disgust or outrage that they were even presented with this particular work to a point where they can find its literary merits and to understand why someone else might not object to it or might, in fact, object to their objection. 

            In all likelihood, a number of these objecting students will leave college very different from when they entered it. I speak from personal experience, and lest anyone so inclined think that I am a godless, postmodern heathen, I will interject only one personal note here: I definitely came out of college questioning things that I went in believing, but I have a greater appreciation for my own conservative Christian background than I did before because I questioned it and continue to grapple with and try to reconcile a spiritualism that’s very personal and dear to me with other ideas. Sometimes Christianity as a religion seems determined to avoid questions, whereas a belief system like Judaism may embrace them by “wrestling” with texts and ideas and prizing “the ability to question freely and without inhibition [and] the valuing of difficult questions.”[7] At any rate, the ability to question the certainty or least staying power of what one believes may help prevent one from stitching any banners preemptively.

            Case in point: Perhaps you’ve heard of Lexi Kozhevsky, the nineteen year-old who stood in front of police officers in Ferguson and (in)famously said she “would rather get hit by something than let it hit them.”[8] If you haven’t heard of Lexi herself, you’ve probably seen her photoshopped into various other scenarios where she defends everyone from Voldemort’s Death Eaters to the entire cast of villainous characters from Dragonball Z. I’m trying to avoid particular partialities of my own here (that Black Lives Matter, for instance), but I offer up Lexi as so many others have done, albeit with less derision, as an example of the same sort of certainty on display in the Duke case. Although I cannot speak for Lexi’s personal experiences or her background, this is a college-aged kid (someone who would just be starting college), and her casual certainty—“Look guys, discrimination is a thing and I get it, but we need to say with the people who protect us and that’s what I’m doing”—seems like the sort that changes with time and questioning.[9] Or maybe she won’t change. All I know is that I was once a freshman in a class of freshmen who argued with a professor that there was nothing racist about The Lion King, and today I would tell you that The Lion King is a very “problematic” piece—that it represents an extension of a cultural association of evil with darker colors; that the “bad” lions live in the impoverished area of the wilds; etc. People change and grow (and should change and grow), and whether they radically alter what they believe or not in college, chances are they will be better equipped to parse those beliefs on the other side and to at least offer a more nuanced argument than “I’m certain about this and am shocked that you aren’t.” The problem is that sometimes those certainties, when publically aired with confidence, come back to haunt you down the road. 

            Ultimately, it’s simply impractical to say that no one should express themselves or their views until they’re of an arbitrary age or ambiguous level of experience—though there is an argument to be made that entering a new discourse community requires first acquainting yourself with what the pervading trends in that community are before making yourself heard (God gave us two ears but only one mouth, after all). The solution to the particular problem of things people may have once been certain about being brought up as evidence against them in the future likely lies with reworking the toxicity of call-out culture and in questioning at every stage of one’s personal growth the propriety of posting everything you think at a given time in a place where it can be found and returned to you when you are older, wiser, and perhaps justifiably embarrassed to once again see that old, dirty banner you thought you buried years ago.              

Notes:

[1] Ahmad, Asam. “A Note on Call-Out Culture.” Briarpatch Magazine. Briarpatch Magazine, 2 Mar. 2015. Web. Accessed 24 Aug. 2015. <http://briarpatchmagazine.com/articles/view/a-note-on-call-out-culture>  

[2] ourcatastrophe. “On ‘Call-Out Culture’ And Why I’m Not Into It.” browcatastrophe. Tumblr, n.d. Web. Accessed 24 Aug. 2015. <http://mewmewfoucault.tumblr.com/post/7909863121/on-call-out-culture-and-why-im-not-into-it>   

[3] Ahmad

[4] Ballentine, Claire. “Freshmen Skipping ‘Fun Home’ For Moral Reasons.” The Chronicle. Duke Student Publishing Company, 21 Aug. 2015. Web. Accessed 24 Aug. 2015. <http://www.dukechronicle.com/article/2015/08/freshmen-skipping-fun-home-for-moral-reasons>

[5] Ibid.

[6] TWC News. “Duke University Summer Reading Sparks Controversy.” Time Warner Cable News. Time Warner Cable Enterprises, 24 Aug. 2015. Web. Accessed 24 Aug. 2015. <http://www.twcnews.com/nc/triangle-sandhills/news/2015/08/24/summer-reading-sparks-controversy.html>

[7] Horowitz, Bethamie. “A Tradition of Questioning Tradition.” Forward. The Forward Association, 27 May 2005. Web. Accessed 24 Aug. 2015. <http://forward.com/opinion/3565/a-tradition-of-questioning-tradition/>

[8] “Powerful Photo: College Student ‘Protects’ Police from Ferguson Protestors.” Fox News Insider. FOX News Network, 11 Aug. 2015. Web. Accessed 24 Aug. 2015. Web. <http://insider.foxnews.com/2015/08/11/college-student-protects-police-ferguson-protesters-powerful-photo>

[9] Ibid.    

Do we live in a post-blog world?

“The age of the blog is forever over. The age of ‘tl;dr’ is upon us. Even tweets are deemed too wordy these days. We can dig our heels in and say ‘Not here! Not me!’ But that doesn’t change the idiot momentum of history.”

            --        Caitlín R. Kiernan, “I wouldn’t mind leaving, but I got so far to go” (13 Jul. 2015)[1]

            I have never had any doubts as far as the readership of my blog(s) is concerned. I got started blogging years ago in a Professional Writing class, so I had something like a captive audience for those first few posts. When I decided to expand the blog beyond the class assignment, I also started to link to posts through Facebook, Twitter, and eventually Tumblr to try to bring in more readers. Although the blog itself had a dedicated Facebook page, most of the views came from friends following the links. Twitter brought in a few readers, but Tumblr barely attracted any. I left my old blog behind to start again with what I conceived of as a more professional voice and an increased interest in producing quality posts with a greater emphasis on researched topics than personal stories, and at the time of my leaving I had been holding steady at seven official “followers” through Google and only a handful of actual comments on posts that mostly came from friends. Originally, this wasn’t even supposed to be another blog. It was going to be a professional portfolio or website with a little blog on the side, but when I couldn’t find a platform that provided what I was looking for, I came back to Blogger with the intention of continuing the same practices I had previously established with the old blog.

            For a little further perspective, consider that it took me nearly five years of posting semi-regularly to the old blog to hit roughly 10,373 views. This blog currently has around 200. Granted, I am not a well-known blogger. I’m not even remotely famous, and I could arguably have worked harder to draw in readers. I have recently heard at least one blogger whose posts I frequently read saying good things about Medium as a platform for potentially attracting an audience.[2] That’s beside the point as far as this post is concerned, however. I am far more interested in the relevance of blogging in general. Reading Kiernan’s post was the impetus for this interest.

            Admittedly, I felt a bit like a dinosaur having to Google “tl;dr” to find out that it meant “too long; didn’t read.” I had seen it used before, but I never took the time to figure it out. Obviously this sort of shorthand is a product of internet culture, generally, and texting and Twitter culture, specifically. Its brevity is functional but also tonal. Like other shortened words or phrases—“Totes,” “’Merica,” etc.—it suggests a flippancy or even petulance associated with adolescence or teen culture, which is often seen, reductively, as apathetic about or disinterested in complicated discourse or subjects requiring effort to understand. “Tl;dr” encapsulates not just an idea but an attitude generally associated with internet and youth cultures which are, arguably, cultures that currently dovetail in their interests and ideas. As someone who has studied education and done some teaching, I am familiar with “tl;dr” as an attitude if not as a concept with a name (so to speak). If it’s too long or not of interest, then why read it? More recently, I was working in a university library and saw that someone had written on the desk where I was sitting, “I love studying for finals not in my major. – No one ever.” Although not necessarily a matter of length in every case, the sentiment is the same. The effort required to do something makes the doing not worthwhile.

            It’s easy to see this attitude as a result of unmotivated youth, but arguing that today’s young people are less anything (less studious, less motivated, less moral) than previous generations feels remarkably shortsighted given that there has always been a cycle of older generations bemoaning the shortcomings of the next generation, which will in time be the older generation itself. If today’s youth are less likely than ever to put forth the effort to read a longer piece of writing (for example), the cause can be found not just in internet culture which promotes information glut and prioritizes easily digestible snippets over more developed texts but also in the current economic climate. The cyclical, generational argument about youth not caring is one way of explaining the problem, but I have recently begun to feel that the issue is too much caring or too much responsibility. I would argue, though I have no data to support the argument, that today’s young people are more aware than ever of what is expected of them by society. Perhaps they have less time for activities they do not find immediately enjoyable or applicable to their lives because they feel that they have such a short amount of time to work with.

            In that case, the abbreviated lingo and cries of “YOLO” take on a more desperate feel. “The end is nigh.” Youth is short, and the stakes are high. Although different people take on varying levels of responsibility at different points in their lives, the implications are the same. You have to have fun while you can, but you also need to figure out what to do with your life. You have to decide on your career path, find work, pay off any loans that you might accrue in the process. I’m generalizing heavily here, but this is the thrust of what I’m arguing: that a youthful unwillingness to read or otherwise “waste time” is a result of societal forces (cultural, economic, political) that conspire to impress upon them at increasingly young ages the utter lack of time that is afforded to them to figure out what to do and to get it done. Without going too far afield into the subjects of pedagogy and educational theory, I find it very interesting that while public schools become increasingly regimented and stress the importance of getting ready early for the future, certain collegiate subjects like Rhetoric and Composition are trying to move in more holistic directions that stress experimentation and exploration—things today’s youth seemingly have little time for.

            Again, this sense that time is short and anything that cannot be done in as short a time as possible isn’t worth doing could be a result of an increased sense of urgency amongst the younger generation, but the source is something of a mystery. In the case of internet culture, in particular, one can almost find a version of the old chicken and egg question. Did youth culture influence the creation of quickie social media culture like Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr? Or did quickie social media culture influence its youthful users? The world may never know… Suffice it to say that it’s easy to see a bit of one in the other. Either way, internet culture is a fast culture, and the question of whether blogs still have a relevant place in that culture today is an important one—especially if you happen to have a blog like yours truly. When I was doing some research for this piece, in fact, one of the suggestions offered by Google to complete my “are blogs” search was “are blogs still popular.”

            According to Mary Pipher in her chapter on blogs (“Blogs—A Revolutionary New Tool”) in her book Writing to Change the World, “blogs surfaced in the 1990s as online journals for people who worked with computer technology, but they quickly morphed into a much bigger phenomenon. Computer users began posting personal blogs that included everything from daily activities to poetry, travel tips, movie reviews, political commentary, and thoughts about the universe.”[3] 9/11 served as the catalyst for a dramatic increase in the number of users with blogs, and by 2005 there were thirty-two million people in the United States (sixteen percent of the population) working blogs into their lives as part of their daily reading, while one in seventeen Americans maintained a blog of their own.[4] Of course, this data came from 2005, and Pipher’s book came out in 2006. Perhaps tellingly, Tom Watson wrote for Forbes in 2014 that when he tells social entrepreneurs to start a blog as a part of their digital media strategy, “[t]hey sometimes look at me like I teleported in from the mists of 2006.”[5] In the world of business, blogs were once integral parts of marketing; however, they have increasingly been relegated to the backburner in favor of maintaining a presence on more immediately accessible social media sites. Writing for Didit, Steve Baldwin reports that in a recent (as of May 15, 2014) study of “professional social media experts,” eighty-seven percent maintained blogs, but only thirty-four percent actually produced up-to-date content for those sites by posting at least once per week.[6]       

            Given their origins in the 90s and the fact that we now live in an increasingly streamlined, “mobile-dominated media world,” blogs have been outclassed by newer services that are definitely more efficient at allowing people to share their thoughts, though they have developed flashier and more intuitive interfaces in an effort to keep place. Although it’s certainly possible to have shorter blog posts or blogs that primarily deal in images or photographs—and these types of blogs and posts fair best on Tumblr where the most popular content is that which can be quickly digested while scrolling through updates on one’s dashboard—I find it hard to separate the notion of blogging from its root “log”: as in, a captain’s log or some other long-form, primarily text-based piece of writing.

            Interestingly, both Watson and Baldwin still encourage the use of blogs despite the trends in social media use. To a degree their sentiments echo those of Pipher from 2006. Blogs provide instant publication and the possibility for anyone with internet access and an email address to write about whatever they want and potentially join or create a discourse community. They are strictly democratic spaces, as they “offer us zero degrees of separation from people anywhere and everywhere.”[7] Whether it represents a business or an individual, a blog (even one hosted through Google) gives that group or person content control, the opportunity to connect directly with an audience, and the opportunity to establish a “brand,” which can include a space free of ads or other unrelated content which has increasingly invaded spaces like Facebook and Twitter to distract from the personable and personal aspects of those services. Baldwin specifically suggests that “social platforms” like these are transient, while “domains and blogs go on and on.” How many kids today know about MySpace or GeoCities? There is some merit to this argument given that having a domain name you own and through which you can host your content into perpetuity guarantees you web space where you can easily archive work that is difficult to find years, months, weeks, or even days after the initial posting on a site like Facebook or Twitter. Not to mention the fact that some creators are leery of using Facebook to promote original content like artwork because of potentially skeevy copyright issues.

            None of this actually answers the question of whether blogs are still a viable part of internet culture, however. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be a definitive answer. There are a lot of people on the internet, and not everyone has a “tl;dr” attitude. Arguably, Medium is working to provide a platform from which internet texts of all lengths can find readers (and all readers can find the texts they will read) by offering an estimated reading time next to the link to an article. Readers can decide for themselves whether a five minute read or an eighteen-minute one better suits their needs. From an English teacher’s perspective, students read daily (all sorts of things), and there is plenty of content available for them to choose from. From a content creator’s perspective, I recognize that I live in a world influenced by youth and/or internet culture, where “tl;dr” is a likelihood, and where the sort of writing that I do is less likely to attract an audience. Although I like to hope that someone will read what I write, I also recognize the holistic value in writing for its own sake or at least for a smaller audience. I could post more often and in smaller snippets and probably draw more attention, but that’s not what I want from my own writing. It’s not what I want out of blogging. I have argued that recognizing early on what one’s ideal “endgame” in writing is is important to the writing process. An honest assessment of what one expects to get at the end of a particular writing venture is important for warding off disappointment and not expecting something from oneself superficially that one doesn’t truly want on a deeper level.

            More objectively, my final thought on the blogs issue is this: next to official news sites and platforms like Kindle that presuppose a certain amount of professionalism (though it certainly varies), a blog is the purest, widest-reaching way for individuals to self-publish in the internet age. Blogs provide access to an audience to people who would otherwise be denied access through traditional channels like publishing houses and the like. Marginalized voices can use blogs to great effect. Though the digital divide is still a very real issue (and therefore even access to blogs is gated based on economics), there is still great opportunity for self-expression to be found at minimal cost through blogging. Where one can easily be one truncated voice lost among many on Twitter or Facebook, a blog allows a voice to thrive and express itself as fully as it chooses. Relevancy is as much a matter of effective marketing one’s voice as it is a matter of being cutting edge. Blog content is your content, and what you do with it is determined by your personal endgame and limited only by your aspirations and your willingness to seek out your intended audience.

    

Notes:

[1] http://greygirlbeast.livejournal.com/1131797.html (Author Caitlín R. Kiernan’s LiveJournal.)

[2] Lauren Modery of Hipstercrite (http://www.hipstercrite.com/). You can read her article “What I’ve Learned from Going Viral” on Medium (https://medium.com/@Hipstercrite/what-i-ve-learned-from-going-viral-b0f7c557672b).   

          

[3] Pipher, Mary. Writing to Change the World. New York: Riverhead Books, 2006. 215. Print.

[4] Ibid.

[5] http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomwatson/2014/02/28/why-blogs-still-matter-for-social-entrepreneurs/ (Tom Watson’s article “Why Blogs (Still) Matter For Social Entrepreneurs.”)

[6] http://www.didit.com/are-blogs-still-important-today/ (Steve Baldwin’s article “Are Blogs Still Important Today?”)

[7] Pipher, 216-217, 221.