The trouble with blogging


From where I sit, I can tell a lot about blog readers. I gather no personally identifiable information about visitors to my blogs, but the aggregate data reflects and confirms what other bloggers tell me from their aggregate data. Most web surfers are in a hurry. They want a quick read, a yes or no, does this site agree or disagree with some proposition already in mind? They visit more briefly than anyone would if looking for arguments made in depth. They are not interested in third alternatives or questions refactored to reconsider the yes-no axis--to look not at both sides of a problem, but to walk all the way around it.

I don't object, for that is the way I use the blogosphere too, most of the time. Just a quick info-hit here or there to survey the range of thought is enough. What I see might sometimes point me to deeper research, in which I look at sources more weighty than something some blogger posted in a quick-read article.

The trouble is that new ideas and unique perspectives don't thrive in the blogosphere, the place becomes an echo chamber, the same tiresome tropes reiterated endlessly. In the religious sphere, we see recycled apologetics that have achieved nothing toward unity since Reformation days offered as the latest answers to division and divisiveness. The Protestants are wrong, or the Catholics are wrong. Saying that's right, the Protestants and the Catholics are wrong, only confuses the usual touch-and-go visitor to a blog.

So then, a question for anyone passing by: How do new ideas get traction, where should one go to present them? Blogging about my ideas on church unity gives me the feeling that I am trying to share a BOOM-boom-boom.



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