She describes a dif­fer­ent time, indeed.

Ear­ly blog­ging was slow­er, less behold­en to the hourly news cycle, and peo­ple were more inclined to talk about per­son­al enthu­si­asms as well as what was going on in the world because blogs were con­sid­ered an indi­vid­ual enter­prise, not nec­es­sar­i­ly akin to a reg­u­lar publication.

I appre­ci­ate her com­ments on invest­ed read­ers. The num­ber of peo­ple who were part of the “Quak­er blo­gos­phere” back in day was not that large but some­thing about the cru­cible of the writ­ing and debat­ing meant that they devel­oped ideas that have out­sized influ­ence today. The same sorts of con­ver­sa­tions con­tin­ue to hap­pen today in cor­ners of Face­book, Red­dit, and Dis­cord but there’s not the same sort of feel­ing of shared community.

Requiem for Ear­ly Blogging 

As part of Talk­ing Points Mem­o­’s 25th anniver­sary, I wrote an essay on ear­ly blog­ging, and what I…

Eliz­a­beth Spiers