# Bix points out that the criticisms quoted by Brent yesterday were actually about the decline of paid, professional blogging.
I reacted to Brent's reaction rather than checking the conversation first hand (there's a lesson here) but feel that position is still somewhat valid.
The rise of the large (social) platforms has, in part, destroyed the market for paid, professional blogging. It is so easy to publish now that almost anyone can do it, flooding the market with thoughts and hot takes on just about everything.
There are so many people willing to write for free.
As Job Gruber said on an episode of the Dialog podcast: "The value of writing has dropped so precipitously."
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A Worthy Cause
My employer is very focused on giving back to the community but most of the initiatives don't really resonate with me. Maybe it's because getting involved is listed in our annual objectives rather than being voluntary.
The opportunity arose, however, to volunteer for this year's Royal British Legion Poppy Appeal and I jumped at the chance.
Ever since the kids were little we've always drummed into them the importance of respecting, remembering, and honouring the sacrifices of, our service personnel, no matter your personal views.
So, rather than just ticking a box to complete my objectives, I spent some time (along with a couple of hundred others) to sell some poppies and speak to a few of those making donations.
A very worthy cause.
Those lamentations by Lambert and Warzel continue to reverberate. Colin Walker is right that my original response to him sort of glossed over the impact upon blogging of social media—I was perhaps overly focused on making sure we knew how ridiculous the Lambert/Warzel complaints really were. I don’t, however, especially agree that “rise of the large (social) platforms has, in part, destroyed the market for paid, professional blogging”. The speculative mythology of VC-backed blogfarms is what destroyed that market, while social platforms is what laid waste to personal and non-professional blogging. (Arguably, perhaps, since much of, say, pre-Twitter blogging included a mixture of short and long posts, once Twitter siphoned off those small posts—the “micro” in “microblogging”, which is what Twitter had pitched itself as—a kind of intertia took over and “macroblogging” almost became something of a chore.) As aptly noted last year by Sameer Vasta, “blogging has always been about thinking out loud, and about allowing my thoughts and ideas to evolve and grow, through time, out in a public sphere where I’m connected to others who are thinking out loud and growing, too”. “The garden metaphor is a compelling vision for what a blog can be,” writes CJ Eller (in part of a proposed “blogchain” on ways to “expand upon blogging as a medium”). “It implies that our thoughts can grow over time with the right kind of nurturing care.” The important thing to remember about blogging before the professional VC-backed class took over is that it’s a process not a product. This never was particularly true for paid, professional blogging, where for the most part you still were locked into a more journalistic approach and each post more closely resembled an end unto itself. Rarely did paid, professional bloggers appear to be thinking out loud or tending a garden. Every personal or non-professional blog post, on the other hand (or, at least, most if not every), ends with an unwritten but silent understood, “To be continued.”