I’m giving up reading blogs for Lent.
The proximate cause of this is Bora’s latest blame-the-media post, which is just deja vu all over again, because I’m pretty sure this exact conversation has gone on ten times before (the fact that scientists find other scientists compelling speakers does not mean that scientists are good at communicating to the general public). But this is really part of a larger disillusionment with the medium as a whole that’s been growing for the past several months. More and more, I’m finding that reading blogs is pissing me off to no good end.
This is a fairly specific sort of disillusionment. I’m not down on blogs as a communications medium– I still think they’re a great way to present information to a very broad (potential) audience. Rather, I’m coming to doubt the idea of blogs as a conversation medium.
“What do you mean?” you say. “There are conversations going on on blogs all over the place.” And sure, you can point to lots of examples of people on different blogs talking at each other. But “conversation” implies something more than a series of alternating lectures. For a real conversation, you need some give and take– each party needs to give the other’s arguments serious consideration, and ideally, there should be some development, some evolution. Someone’s opinion should change, or at least shift position.
And more and more, I’m finding that this sort of conversation doesn’t take place on or between blogs. People just trade position statements over and over and over. While these are superficially in response to somebody else’s arguments, there’s just give, no take. They say something, get a response, and post the exact same thing in response to the response. Most bloggers barely bother to change their examples, let alone their opinions.
The most obvious and direct example of this is the well known comment section phenomenon in which the latest commenter doesn’t bother to read the 17 previous comments before posting the exact same thing that has already been said a dozen times. But the same thing goes on in top-level posts. The same misrepresentations of positions, misunderstandings of arguments, and missing of points carry on and on unchanged for weeks and months and years. I’m guilty of some of the same behavior myself, though I try not to be.
I’m finding this more and more irritating as time goes by. I find myself walking around wanting to punch something, all because people on the Internet are pissing me off. And, you know, this isn’t good.
So, in keeping with my Catholic upbringing, I’m giving up reading blogs for Lent. Life’s too short to keep letting the same people piss me off in the same ways over and over. So I’m shutting down Google Reader, and cleaning out my RSS feeds. Starting Wednesday, no blog reading until Easter.
Of course, also in keeping with my Catholic upbringing, there’s some hair-splitting legalism (“Oh, by the way, fish isn’t meat”) to go along with this.
Note, particularly, that I said I’m giving up blog reading for Lent, not posting. I’ll still post stuff here– I have to finish out the Laser Smackdown, after all, and I do still have a book to promote. And I’ll keep up Thursday Baby Blogging, don’t worry. But I’m not going to be reading blogs, other than what I need to do for judging the Research Blogging awards, which means there will be no Links Dump posts, and no responses to other people’s posts. Which will mean a radically reduced posting rate– sorry if this cuts into your web-based entertainment.
At the end of this time, I’ll re-evaluate, and probably repopulate my Google Reader with a much smaller set of feeds, and we’ll see how things go from there. Maybe I’ll find that I really miss the whole thing, or maybe I’ll still be disgusted when I get back, in which case I may consider packing the whole thing in.
In the interim, though, it’s not like I’ll lack for things to do. I do have a day job, and the cutest toddler in the universe. I’ve got a bunch of projects that could use more attention than they’ve been getting, and the time freed up by not reading a hundred blogs a day will go a long way to help with that.
This takes effect this Wednesday, the 17th (though the Google Reader trimming will commence immediately), so if you’ve been itching to take potshots at me on a blog, get ’em in quick.
Interesting. The post of mine that you linked, combined with the very next post of mine, combined with the Anil Dash post linked from both of my posts, are trying to address exactly your concerns.
As I said, it’s not just your post, it’s a whole bunch of things. I had more or less decided to do this last Friday during the drive to Boston. Your post, and specifically my “Jesus Christ, we’ve been over this a dozen times!” reaction to it, was just what sealed the deal.
Hmmm…
Interesting idea. I agree with you on many points. However, I think by your definition, many “conversations” — oral discussions even between sympathetic individuals — are not conversations.
Greta and I will often have a “conversation” at the end of the day just to catch up on what the other is doing. Half the time there’s very little acknowledgment of the other person. She says what she did that day; I say what I did. We’re both satisfied, and we often acknowledge that we’re not really responding to each other. But there’s still some value in sharing our points of view.
Interesting idea. I agree with you on many points. However, I think by your definition, many “conversations” — oral discussions even between sympathetic individuals — are not conversations.
Yeah, I’m talking here about cases where one party is trying to convince the other of something. Simply informing one another of things is a different scenario than what I had in mind when I wrote this.
Dude, you are very proud of yourself, because all bloggers except for you are just “wasting time” with their blogs. It’s part of your narrative that everything on earth is silly and stupid, except for what you find important or interesting.
You’ve taken us down this road a bajillion times before. Snoooooz…
Oooooh, I smell a meme. Please point to a conversation online (esp your own blog) that shows where you have changed a nontrivial position of your own.
I know my biggest problem with Science blogs are:
1) non-threaded comments means it is difficult to follow conversations in the comments.
2) non-threaded comments means it’s pretty much impossible to have email notification of a follow up to your comments, and individual comments can’t make a discussion. To actually discuss something, you have to be sufficiently obsessive to repeatedly reload the page to see if anyone has responded to you. Big waste of time!
Solution: Go back to a format more like livejournal, insanejournal, dreamwidth, or some other threaded reader! While there are some substandard elements, they are much better for fostering discussion instead of declaration.
While I am not catholic, my understanding is that lent is supposed to be a private spiritual arrangement that demonstrates humility before god, not a grotesque self-aggrandizing public display.
For what it’s worth I agree entirely and have felt the same way for nearly as long as I have been reading Internet blogs. Blogs, although potentially capable of generating productive conversation, tend towards bloggers shouting their opinions on the rooftops and then moving on before a discussion can be had. That is to say that blogs are rarely ever an exchange of ideas but are frequently a soap box from which to give a speech. To be fair, I imagine it is very difficult for someone like PZ Myers or Phil Plait to spend any reasonable amount of time having a conversation when they are posting 10+ posts per day, however they need to be aware that while posting as much as they do draws in more readers, it also inevitably lowers the quality of their posts. I imagine that this is the reason why bloggers who post less frequently per day (e.g. Chad Orzel & Matt Springer) and those who have multiple contributors to a blog (e.g. Cosmic Variance) generally make posts of a higher quality. What needs to be found, in my opinion, is a good compromise between quality and quantity of blog posts.
Yes, yes, we all defer to your amply demonstrated expertise in this area, CPP…
CPP, that would be Matthew 6:17-18. From the American Standard Bible:
In short, if you’re going to fast in service to the Lord, there’s don’t make a public display of it.
“…then don’t make a public display of it,” that is.
This expresses exactly the frustration that made me scale way back my participation in those conversations, they really are not. In my case (because of my area of research) I found there is an attractor, and everything I write leads to pretty much one conversation, over and over again. I am wondering if one solution is to blog with comments turned off, I find that anticipating the shouting match altered the way I write, and not in a good way. Made it less fun also…
I can relate very well, though it’s too bad I won’t hear from you in a while, your blog being one of the few that I read. Hope to see you back in 40 days then.
Solution: Go back to a format more like livejournal, insanejournal, dreamwidth, or some other threaded reader! While there are some substandard elements, they are much better for fostering discussion instead of declaration.
Most of the threaded comment systems I’ve seen kind of suck, actually. It’s really difficult to tell what’s new in the comments, if you aren’t sitting there hitting refresh like a rat looking for food pellets.
This expresses exactly the frustration that made me scale way back my participation in those conversations, they really are not. In my case (because of my area of research) I found there is an attractor, and everything I write leads to pretty much one conversation, over and over again. I am wondering if one solution is to blog with comments turned off
What I really want is a killfile, preferably one of the sentient ones from Vinge’s A Fire Upon the Deep. You can sort of get the effect on your own blog using mail filters (I get comment notification emails, which is the main way I follow comments here), but I’d like to be able to have them not displayed at all.
I can relate very well, though it’s too bad I won’t hear from you in a while, your blog being one of the few that I read.
I will still be posting some stuff, just less of it. Probably more ResearchBlogging type material, actually– if I’m not trying to maintain a high volume of posts, I can spend a little more time on the physics.
Your Links posts have led me in many fruitful directions, and I’m grateful for them. Some of the best are in my Google Reader, so I’ll be ok during your ‘fast’. But I’ll miss the new surprises.
In the math blogging world, I have found real conversations. I guess we’re lucky to be able to learn from one another.
I will miss the link dumps. Except for slacktivist, you are constantly pointing me to interesting posts that I would not have found on my on.
The difference is, I don’t pretend not to be doing so.
Yeah, that was the passage I was thinking of. I just forgot the exact citation.
Come to think of it, I very rarely use my blog for conversation. If I reply to another blog, it’s usually because a post inspired me to think of some specific issue, not because I want to convey some idea to the original blogger. Part of this is that in the more obscure parts of the blogosphere, we don’t really expect anyone to take notice of our links.
You know, most of us don’t have the luxury of having so many readers that we can complain that they’re repeating themselves.
Anyways, sounds like a neat thing to do for lent. Personally, I would die if I tried that. Good luck!
Btw, on the issue of communication, esp in the comment section, you might find this little experiment of mine amusing: Communication 🙂
Will you still be Twittering your links? I enjoy your link dumps.
Um. Never mind! (channeling Emily Litella…) Sometimes it takes me a while to actually figure out the ramifications of things, e.g., if you’re not *reading* blogs, you’re not likely to be *linking* to blogs.
Duh.
Really? A Matthew quote about not telling folks you’re fasting. Come on. This isn’t that kind of fast (although he links it to Lent). He’s come out to say he’s giving up something he finds irritating, not something he (currently) loves, so it’s hard to see how this is trying to impress us with how self-sacrificing he is. It’s like when I tell everyone that every year for Lent I give up my New Year’s Resolutions.
Anyway, Chad says that he needs a break. I generally just lurk, but I think I’m going to join him on this one. I’m not sure I can give up on blogs entirely, but I’m definitely giving up on comments sections…. after this comment, anyway. Not sure for how long, but just thinking about it is lifting my spirits (thanks for the idea Chad), so it may be for a very long time.
(BTW, the irritation I’m feeling with blogs and comments lately hasn’t been generated by anything that anyone in the present company has started or this blog at all, just to be clear. So I could stick with this one, but I think a break from all blogs might help me recover from drama elsewhere.)
So, you’re giving up reading blogs. I’m not sure I understand why the fuck anyone cares if one person stops reading, for Lent or any other reason. Other than making some barely comprehensible Nisbetesque grandstand, I’m not sure what the point is.
It will cut into my web-based entertainment, but hey, it isn’t always about me.
Just mostly.
😉
Srsly, enjoy (and is that even compatible with Lent? I am not now, nor have I ever been Catholic, but I have a vague impression that Lent is not Happy Fun-fun Time…) your break.
Darn, now who’s going to link to my posts? 🙂
Hey Chad!
I’ll keep you in my prayers this Lenten season. I know you’re not much of a praying man at this point but if you find yourself in the mood I’d appreciate a return of such. Don’t let people get you down with their proof-texting; what you’re doing strikes me as mostly informative and a little bit commentary, not Pharisaical grandstanding about how holy you are. The only thing that kills me is, me being a more conservative Christian, Slacktivist pisses me off in all the most productive ways, so now I might have to go out and RSS it myself if I want to get that stimulation regularly…
– Dan Lower
One more thing: The reason this isn’t Pharisaical grandstanding, is that the announcement isn’t just “look at me I’m doing something awesome” (which, as Lenten sacrifices go, let’s just say I’ve got a few more years of spiritual growth before I could), but it is relevant to his readers, who otherwise would wonder where the heck his frequent link-dump posts went.
I also have a question for Chad: Have you decided if “blogs” includes XKCD?
If you don’t like Chad’s blogging style, I invite you to get your own blog.
Turnabout is fair play 🙂
I’m sorry to hear you are going…I was just starting to read you regularly…I just found out that Jessica @ Bioephemera is also taking a break. If I go to Martin @ Aardvarch and he is breaking…I’ll be really disappointed. At any rate a week or so ago I finished reading your book. It was very good and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Frankly, I’m reading fiction now, but your book and a couple of others are on a very short list to be re-read in the very near future. Thanks for writing it!
The dude didn’t say he wasn’t gonna write…he said he wasn’t gonna read.
That’s why it’s a big ole “yawn”.
Enjoy your break, but I hope you don’t quit long term. Your blog is definitely one of my favorites, and it would leave a big hole in my RSS feed.
I found myself doing the same thing, and my solution was to kill several blogs in my RSS feed that I found annoyed me more than once a week. Seems to have restored my sanity.
Best of luck.
I guess you know this – since you are Catholic, but I will emphasize it as I am in Louisiana. Tomorrow is Mardi Gras. So for you this should mean that tomorrow you fatten up on blogs. Over-read blogs. Then you should be all set for lent. That is the Louisiana way.
So you’re gonna stop reading blogs, because they irritate you. Ha ha ha ha! I remember when I was younger, and I told my mom my brilliant idea for Lent: I was going to give up doing the dishes for Lent. It doesn’t work that way, she said. You give up something you LIKE, she said.
Note, particularly, that I said I’m giving up blog reading for Lent, not posting. I’ll still post stuff here– I have to finish out the Laser Smackdown, after all, and I do still have a book to promote.
Of course, of course. Of course, you’ll keep doing the things you LIKE, and the things that advance your personal interests. It’s not like you’d uh, want to SACRIFICE or anything during Lent.
I mean, if you want to stop reading blogs, stop reading blogs. If you want to stop reading them for 40 days, stop reading them for 40 days. If you want to announce that on your blog, announce that on your blog. But why mock a religious tradition – your OWN religious tradition – by pretending it’s some sort of big sacrifice overladen with religious meaning? Jesus.
Zuska: Because he wanted to.
I am utterly amazed by the number of comments that are all hung-up on “lent”…simply amazing.
I’d be interested in a follow-up post about how to foster better “communication”. The “livejournal” type threads seem a reasonable idea. What else can you think of?
I am utterly amazed by the number of comments that are all hung-up on “lent”…simply amazing.
It’s kind of nice. I’m really touched by the sudden outbreak of concern for the respectful treatment of the religious traditions of others…
I guess all of this anger has nothing to do with the Orange loss yesterday? (btw, i was at the game and it was lost well before that horrible ‘intentional foul’ call 🙁 ).
I used to get angry at blogs/people online..but now i just think of this:
http://xkcd.com/386/
and realize that it’s not worth it.
Go Orange!
What is going on here? I see a pack of hyenas howling and jeering at a retiring lion. Lament! There are too many ‘overeducated people’ who just spout what got into their heads with no genuine love of learning or understanding.
Good decision, Chad! Too many interactions between people kill the novelty and originality of an individual. Isolate yourself for a while, that will make you reflect on the world and yourself without being influenced by run-of-the-mill ideas. Enjoy your solitude!
People seldom change their opinions In Real Life, either. These “real conversations” of which you speak are pretty rare things.
Those link dumps were always way too distracting for me, so perhaps it’s safe to start reading this blog regularly again now. 🙂
But it’s good to see that you will be missed, so to speak, by your co-bloggers that turned up.
AHAHAHAH! Way to feed his delusions of grandeur!
Sorry *lol*, see how attentive I’m reading (bang head against the wall). I dropped out at the word “Catholic” I believe.
An excellent showing on all sides to help Chad prove his point, y’all. Well done.
First, Chad wins the thread with this:
Second, one can value solitude without delusions of grandeur.
Third, and related, solitude has its own cleansing value. Giving up something you dislike can be as cleansing as giving up something you like, and hence be in the spirit of Lent. And I say that as a practicing Catholic.
Religious traditions of “others”:
Hmm. I think at least Isis and I can lay as much claim to Catholic religious traditions as Chad. I may not be a practicing Catholic now but I was for a good portion of my life, and I have a pretty good understanding of what Lent is about. “Giving up” reading blogs because they annoy you is not it. Public sanctimony is also not it. So hell ya, it’s a joke to see the religion my mother still cherishes used to further Chad’s self-image as some holier-than-thou Blogiste, and a riot that a self-avowed practicing Catholic would do so. But, you know, he’s above the fray and all, so it makes sense.
Why don’t you just delete the blogs from your reader that make you mad?
I find myself walking around wanting to punch something, all because people on the Internet are pissing me off.
I discovered a partial solution: Stop reading “The Reference Frame.” It won’t eliminate all punching targets, but doing so makes the Internet a 10 times more polite place.
Why don’t you just delete the blogs from your reader that make you mad?
Because that’s all of them. To a very good approximation, anyway. I can barely read the comments on my own blog without wanting to smack somebody upside the head.
And I know myself well enough to know that without a bright-line rule and a fixed cut-off date, I wouldn’t stick to it. A public statement that I’m doing such-and-so will force me to hold the line, and not start down the slippery slope again.
I haven’t quite decided how to deal with Twitter, though. Probably ought to get on that.
I just want to second what Nemo said at #40. I agree with your point about people talking past each other in blog conversations (and I see that some of the commenters to this post are helpfully illustrating this for you). However, this observation applies to nearly all public discussion nowadays, as exemplified by the current state of political discourse in this country.
Having said that, I still find myself challenged and educated by what I read in blog posts (even the stuff in the comments). I just wish the signal-to-noise ratio wasn’t quite so low sometimes.
You just need to get better blogs. The blogs I read are awesome and never piss me off. No, I don’t normally read yours.
This is a good sentiment:
For a real conversation, you need some give and take– each party needs to give the other’s arguments serious consideration, and ideally, there should be some development, some evolution.
OK … Of course people aren’t going to always agree, but we need to read other arguments carefully or they aren’t going to even be understood. Yes, that is often the major fault of the writer making it difficult. I admit to sometimes dashing off something without taking proper pains with composition and notation (in the IMHO execrable Blogger composition process. I surely don’t appreciate how to best use it.) That can make for some confusing stuff. I also reach into my memory about someone’s positions too much, and have to later find that was misleading (e.g. pleasantly surprised they aren’t so enthralled with some ism I thought they were.) But regardless of the fault there, posts need to either be correctly understood or just left alone. I know we don’t usually have time to do that right but it’s a problem all around.
The same misrepresentations of positions, misunderstandings of arguments, …
Yes, it’s sad. I appreciate Chad acknowledging doing that too. I do it, and so do most readers here. We just have to work harder on that. I think less ad hominem concern for who is doing the talking and their “station” in life would also help enormously.
But I think blogs should be a good way to have give and take about ideas. Perhaps an easier way to add symbols etc, and even a simple drawing program to allow basic diagrams from commenters would help (presumably doable with today’s bandwidth.) BTW “Bee” has a post up now, referencing this one and about the subject; here: http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2010/02/endless-talking.html
HA HA HA. I think CHad has bigger issues than what he chose to give up for Lent. Deeper, deeper issues.
Because that’s all of them. To a very good approximation, anyway. I can barely read the comments on my own blog without wanting to smack somebody upside the head.
Maybe you should figure out how blogging works and delete this pretentious pile of dog shit you call a blog, even if the dog that left the pile knows physics. If you’re not interested in the exchange of idea, but only interested in have a forum with which to expound upon your *awesome* ideas, why not go commentless? That way none of the riff raff will contaminate it.
Wow, here I of all people find myself defending Chad Orzel! I think that overall his blog is a good read, and interesting. Note that like so many other blogs it’s a combination of things and not focused on really getting important issues in QM actually hashed out right here (but couldn’t they be?) He upholds free speech here (unlike e.g. Lubos and Woit) even when critical of him. As for exchange of ideas, well it’s hard to say how much he or various others actually get convinced by someone else to say “Hey, I think you’re right!” I’d say, not often but then it’s hard to say how much good argument came this way. Some people that write IMHO very good blogs are very stubborn in argument and won’t budge often (think of a busy flying insect … 😉 Like I said too, people often misunderstand things. He’s admitted to fault and being like the rest of us, that’s good.
Delurking to say that I can barely read the comments on *this* blog post without wanting to smack *myself* upside the head.
Also, not convinced that it was ever agreed that blogs should be “about the exchange of idea”. They can be; but if the blog writer prefers not, from time to time, that’s his or her prerogative, surely? It’s not like anyone’s forcing me to read Chad’s posts about basketball, for instance.
Chad, the SB front page (under Community) makes it clearly sound like you’re going on hiatus:
That in combination with the title of your post (See You in Forty Days) makes it inevitable that many people will think you’re not going to be blogging. (The post itself is a bit confusing, too… at first I thought that you were saying you were quitting reading blogs for a while in passing, on the way to saying that you wouldn’t be posting either.)
Maybe you need to read better blogs.
I would start with Oklo.org, Mikebrownsplanets, and the planetary society blog, and work your way up from there.
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I can entirely sympathize. I recently turned off *all* blogs and twitter feeds I read solely for politics. And quit watching Olbermann & Maddow. And mostly quit reading the political news. I just can’t stand it anymore.
MKK