Reminiscence of a Blogger – Whatever Happened to the Anime Blogging Community

Author: nova

Where did the community go? Sad post is sad.

Last night I was spending my time roaming through some old posts of mine from the time when I was approaching the 1000-a-month-milestone. That’s when realization hit me – I used to write with a totally different focus back in the day and it wasn’t all that bad either. In fact I say one of my old posts had the substance worth five TL;DR’d season summaries. I came to realize why tsubasa hinted that I have degraded into a more or less average “rice cup blogger“. That said, I still support my claim that light weight blogging is the easiest way to push on below the 500-a-day-line and thus there’s nothing really wrong about writing in “dynamic blogging” fashion. Hell, just look at Kuro – it sure works for him. But when I was reading through some of my old stuff this one funny thought just came up all of a sudden. “Why don’t I write like this anymore?”

So I started thinking of the reasons that allowed me to write like I used to and why I don’t do it any longer. It then occurred to me clear as day – it was the community of anime bloggers that gave me the basis for writing like that. Back in that time, around Dec 07 – March 08, I was quite active within the IRC community of AnimeBlogger.net and I dare say that was what mainly gave me the capability of writing analytic and more daring text. The community and its daily bustle was an endless source of inspiration and feedback that gave me curiosity and confidence required, a push in the back if you will.

But I guess a lot of things changed over the course of summer 2008 that caused the #animeblogger-community to dwindle. I had to spend my summer traveling all over the country on a time-consuming job and had very limited access to internet, so I have no real idea on what happened. But it was certain that #animeblogger in fall 2008 was totally different from #animeblogger in fall 2007 – you know, like Pripyat in 1985 and in 1986.

So why don’t I write like I used to? Because the community that was my basis has all but vanished. The sudden collapse of Anime Blog Awards-project was like the last straw of the community simply disappearing. Can this be remedied? Maybe, or maybe not. Where did the community go? Onto small private channels and groups where people gather to get rid of anyone they don’t particularly like, leaving behind those who desperately hope the community suddenly come back alive again and those who weren’t particularly liked by most.

I miss the old #AB but I guess the times have changed and attitudes too much with it. Will I ever be able to recover my old writing style? With time and effort I’m sure, but maybe it’s time to let it die along with the community it was based on.

So sad.