Sunday 7 November 2021

Blogging and the Facebook monster


Another few months of silence on this blog. Partly that's just general laziness, partly it's just the fact that life has been coming pretty thick and fast.

Of course, one of the things that makes blogging a bit more of a chore is that the energy in Oldhammer has moved away from the blogosphere and towards other forms of social media. I honestly think that's a bit of a shame. True, blogging is pretty newfangled itself compared to the lead we push around - the most appropriate medium for what we do would probably be something like a mimeographed newsletter. But still, blogging gives the time and space to record your projects, share ideas, and then for people to be able to find and look back on them in the future. Compare and contrast with facebook with its deluge of pictures and endlessly looping chatter, where anything more than a couple of days old becomes hard to find.

The thing is, Oldhammer kind of revels in being SLOW: pottering around, beer in hand, admiring things, chatting, and occasionally pushing some toy soldiers across a table. It's about time spent enjoying life with friends, far removed from the "get a couple of games in quick" mentality that modern worklife forces our leisure into. For this reason, social media like facebook doesn't seem like a very good fit. That kind of social media is about instant gratification and short attention spans. And all too often about the kind of bad tempered reflex that comes from not taking time to reflect. Given that it's taken some of our models 40 years to see paint, you'd think we could take a little bit longer to think before we speak!

Ironically, the key reason I'm on facebook these days IS Oldhammer. It's how we plan for the next Little Albion games, think about what we'll do at BOYL, etc. And even though I much prefer the old-style Oldhammer Forum I do like looking at the pretty pictures. But I'm not very good on social media - it's led to some of the bigger fuck ups in my life in recent years. Even in Oldhammer my time as a moderator was a clusterfuck, and I've fallen out with some people there's been no need to fall out with.

Things change. The centre of gravity moves. But I hope there's life in blogging yet, in people being able to share ideas and not just pictures, in things that can be read years later and not lost the second you scroll past them. Let's hope there's more to Oldhammer than just feeding the facebook monster.

And did I write this just so I could show off the Scibor Facebook Monster I finally painted - the one they released when they reached 10,000 likes, and which I got free years when I was buying some shields from them? Of course I did!

8 comments:

  1. I, too, rate the blogsphere more highly than faceache. I have tried several times to move back to it but the addictive measures they inject into social media drags me on in... I'd cut all ties with it if I didn't use the platform for business purposes.

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    1. Actually I'm in a similar position - I need to keep in contact with some people over there for work reasons, even though it's absolutely the worst way to be in contact with anybody. I like using it to plan Oldhammer adventures, but that's about it these days.

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  2. Yeah, I joined facebook as I realised I was missing out on figure deals and was completely unaware on what was going on in the Oldhammer world, and now I find it a deadly time eater, but impossible to quit. Blogs are better and less fleeting, although Instagram could be a happy medium.
    I'm finding with Blogger, I'm not getting all the alerts I should...for instance this recent post of yours slipped through the net.

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    1. The addictive nature is quite sinister. This is how the monster devours you ;)
      I rely on my blogfeed on the right hand side to this blog to see what's happening on blogs I'm interested in, I think it stays reasonably up to date. Funnily enough, there's been a bit of an upsurge recently

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  3. I find more interactions and discussion with social network. Social network syndicat more easly lot of Oldhammer players

    I find blog or forum archive more well.

    For alert, RSS flux could be a solution.

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    1. Right, I'd feel like I was missing out on things if I was off facebook, sadly.

      But to be quite honest with you, the forum was far better for planning games - it's just that far fewer people use that now.

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  4. I like Blogs better too, but it's true that compared to Facebook there's not a lot going on. Few posts and fewer comments means limited interaction, and I personally find it hard to stay in the loop of what's being posted. These days I post mostly on Instagram, which is even more superficial than Facebook, but that's where people are right now. Of course the best is meeting people - I do hope 2022 will allow us to have a proper BOYL with plenty of visitors.

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    1. Blogs offer quality over quantity ;) I always enjoy yours, for example. And yes, fingers crossed for a more joyful 2022.

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