Blogger's Night Out

Tonight, I'm going to a confab of sports bloggers in an NYC watering hole. It'll be my second event in four days (third in five, if you count poker) where I'm face to face with people who also contribute to my online life as a sports blogger. When I'm there, I'll do what I always do in a quasi-work environment: put on my best fake smile and slowly convince myself that Networking Is Enjoyable, that I've got something in common with other people who write for fun, and that, gosh darn it, there's at least ten other things that I should be doing for this here blog to make it more successful, in addition to, well, filling the wordhole.

Realistically, the best of those things would be to find a previously untapped video of a skateboarder lighting themselves on fire, particularly if they have nice breasts.

What's going on out here in Blogfrica, for those of you that care about such things (which is to say, well, the people I've seen three times in the last five days), is that we're slowly taking over for offline print media types. Hey, we might as well... it's not like the press boxes are going to be torn down at all of these stadiums, and with your local newspaper reacting to a declining market share by giving you less and/or charging you more, it's not like those people are going to be coming back with a vengeance. The CPMs (that's advertising talk for the rate that we make from the number of eyeballs that we display to) keep creeping up, and the demographics favor us, in that no one who is settling down at a college dorm right now is finding five new media sources by flipping through the periodicals at the library.

So what's next? Well, it'll consolidate. Anonymity will be replaced by named writers. Coarse opinions and naughty words will fade into the lesser known sites, or be confined to a few notable exceptions. Bloggers will be slowly corrupted by the soft touch of public relations and insider access. How, after all, can you savage the team when it might cost you the private box and one-on-one interview that set your site apart from the great unvetted? And within three to five years (remember, Net time is faster than real time), we'll be reading more and more like what's always been out there, for good and for ill, only with no editors and for less money. It's not like the World Wide Lemur holds the copyright on compromising for a bigger market.

So why go, especially when the siren call of someone else paying for the liquor isn't that big of a deal for me? (I'm remarkably stupid that way.) Well, hell, they asked me. They seem nice and all. Hanging out with sports bloggers is, by definition, hanging out with opinionated sports fans with more than a touch of wit about them. Maybe I'll get some ideas to fill the bloghole (hey, like this!), people for my poker table, or my upcoming NBA auction fantasy league. All in all, possible goals.

You may note the absence of one very real and tangible goal from this that list that many other people have: making a living from blogging. I don't have that one, because I gave up unrealistic dreams of employment when I stopped having a rock band. (Oh, and also because I actually do write for fun.)

Besides, if you do this for a living, you either have to find fiery skateboarders or go to lots of private boxes and hold your tongue. Neither of which I'm very good at, really.

Which means that life at the Tool will continue as it has to know, with the fake name, the access that anyone with cable can duplicate, and the audience that is dwarfed by titty and death. Game on!