The anti-blog blog post

In my last blog post I did a bitter postscript about feeling uninspired about writing articles for this blog. That was a rash thing to do and I wrote it half expecting Tove to edit it out. That she did not do. I think she is also, despite her positive persona, a bit frustrated about the lack of success for this blog and found it very convenient that I volunteered to come forward as the bitter one.

I do (generally) not read blogs, for reasons I will elaborate on in a moment. But Tove does. On her voyages through Substack she has noted three kinds of blogs:

1. The successful ones.
2. The ones who registered and found a good name but never got around to actually write anything.
3. The ones who started writing but shut down due to disinterest.  

Her observation is that this third group very often stops writing about 6 months after they started. This is, of course, all anecdotal but assuming there actually is an increase in shutdowns around this point in time, there must be some psychological reason. Maybe 6 months is about the amount of spare time an average person can spend before it stops being a hobby and has to turn more into a job. Or be discontinued. 

Welcome to the old chaps club

I am an Economist man. With that I mean that I regularly read The Economist. In fact I have been reading it more or less every week for the last 20 years. Why do I read The Economist? The answer is simple: It is a high-quality magazine with very well-written articles about a wide plethora of subjects that interest me. To me, the question is not so much why I am reading The Economist but rather why not everyone is?

It does not have to be The Economist, of course. There are a multitude of journals and magazines providing quality articles on any subject imaginable. Not only do they provide good content, they are also great value for money, at least compared to many blogs. A subscription-only Substack blog usually charges 5-10 dollars a month and publishes 3-4 articles in an average week. A digital subscription to The Economist costs 15 dollars, but the weekly output is nearly 100 articles. 

If you prefer to consume free content there are not only free blogs but also Wikipedia, another of my favorite browsing grounds. The word-to-information ratio on Wikipedia should easily beat most blogs most of the time. You simply learn more for each unit of time invested in reading Wikipedia compared to reading most blogs.

Finally, there are also books. That classic transmitter of information that still has the ability to transfer whole concepts of thought like few other media can. There are good books and bad books and they range in price from very expensive to free, depending on your morality. But if you are content to study a few subjects in depth rather than every subject cursory then you have no reason to go anywhere but your local (or online) library. 

Despite the undeniable attractions of magazines and books, the reading of both have declined for a number of years now. Apparently other media have even greater attractions. Blogs do have some advantages over more traditional forms of information sharing. But as far as I can see the disadvantages outweigh them. This makes me suspect that it is in fact the addictive information fix provided by blogs and other online content that are pulling people in.

Too social media

Intriguingly people not only read blogs instead of magazines, they seem to prefer blogs that emulate the very magazines they are not reading. A look at the top of Substack's blog lists reveals that many of the names there are former journalists. For a famous journalist it probably makes excellent sense to migrate to Substack. A few thousand paid subscribers (which all of Substack's top writers have) will most probably translate to a higher income than could be had at a traditional media outlet.

But why would anyone pay money to read the same type of articles that could be read for less in a traditional magazine? I have no definite answer to this but I suspect that the feeling of connection plays a part. You can not be friends with a writer at a major journal. You can, however, be friends with a blogger. There are several reasons for this. Major journals are intrinsically impersonal in a way blogs are not. You are a customer to the journal but a subscriber to the blog. In practice the main difference is probably that blog writers interact with their readers through the comment section. Journalists almost never write comments on their own articles, if there even is a comment section. This gives a personal bond between blogger and blog reader that journals neither can nor want to emulate. 

There is also the belief (real or imagined) that blogs are more authentic than journals, that writers can write more truthfully when not in leash to editors. This is well illustrated by the story of Sweden's most successful Substacker: Ivar Arpi. Mr Arpi was a successful columnist at one of Sweden's largest and most prestigious newspapers. His talent was mostly writing "on the edge" of what was publicly acceptable in Sweden's notoriously restrained media climate, which made him legions of fans in the borderlands between the conservative right and the populist far right. Then he made some bad career choices, mostly helping found a borderline alternative right online newspaper that quickly folded, which made him unemployable in the established media. Instead he turned to Substack where he is now making more money from his thousands of paid subscribers than he ever did as a columnist. Despite writing more or less the same things as when he worked as a columnist his readers no doubt think that he is finally free to write his heart's desires.

This all says something less flattering about blog readers. What they want is not information as much as opinions. And most of all they want authentic opinions, in practice meaning opinions from a source with a suitable backstory. Information, pure and simple, will always be better produced by professional writers, presented by professional editors to millions of readers at short notice. Individual bloggers (myself included) can only hope to publish scraps of information that have been overlooked or ignored by the better staffed media organizations.

Opinions, on the other hand, are very well suited to the blogosphere. Opinions do not gain much from being well-researched or well-edited. They are still only opinions. What they do gain a lot from is being authentic, coming from a real human being, preferably one that the reader has a lot of respect for. This fits the blog concept like a glove. A blog can get away with publishing inferior information as long as it presents it in a socially attractive way. The reader might not get the best of deals but accepts it for the sentiment of belonging to a social circle.

Proud bores

Opinions are not worthless. They can give new perspectives and the very best opinions are like a little worldview in themselves. Consuming them might lead to an entirely new philosophy of life. That is not to be trifled with. And while journals and magazines are superior on quality, even the quality of their opinions, they usually do not only espouse one opinion. Reading a multitude of blogs will most of the time give you a wider range of opinions than reading one journal. 

Journals, with their predictability and overall high standard, are somewhat akin to supermarkets. Blogs, usually peddling a very limited assortment of goods and of highly variable quality, are the equivalent to roadside stands. Most people will opt for the safety and reliability of the supermarket. But the adventurous and those seeking the new and experimental will inevitably be pulled towards the roadside stand. 

Personally I am not much interested in opinions, no matter how fresh and novel. Maybe I do not need opinions, instead relying on facts, pure and simple. More likely it is due to me being boring. Boring enough to believe that my current opinions are good enough for me, thank you very much. 

Of course, I do have opinions. But I believe opinions to be quite personal and not very transferable between people. After all, they are supposed to be rational conclusions derived from general knowledge and personal preferences. The only way I can change my opinions is if my preferences, general knowledge or rational calculations are wrong. This should not happen very often and when it does it should most often be the general knowledge part that failed, meaning I am most likely to improve my opinions by reading information-heavy journals rather than opinion-heavy blogs. 

Since I have a blog I do write down my opinions in the hope that someone will read them. I try to keep what I write light on the opinions and heavy on the information, hoping to rake up some of those information crumbles that the general media have failed to disseminate sufficiently. But deep inside I know that I am mostly providing opinion, my very selection of information is an opinion, there is no way I can deny this. 

All this makes for some agonizing writing experiences. I am more or less writing things I do not want to read myself. Of course, I want to read the things I write. But that is because it is tailored to my specific preferences, to my current level of knowledge and to my preferred type of reasoning. It still surprises me that other people want to read what I am writing. Blogs being social institutions, I suspect they are not only interested in my writing but also in my person. Considering how boring I am, that seems incredible but given that I belong to the part of the population that prefers to go through life without drawing attention to themselves, it is still somewhat distressing. 

Lost in translation

For reasons like this there is a certain element of guilt in writing a blog. I have the feeling that I am forcing my own set of interests upon you innocent readers. This mindset might not be entirely rational but the feeling is still real. In fact, writing this particular text is liberating in a sense. I am accusing you. You, yes you, are guilty of reading this, of your own free will no less. And if you are guilty I can not be guilty too, at least not as much. Not being the most culpable is a good start towards innocence. 

One could question why I am writing blog posts at all. To be fair, I am a very reluctant blogger. There is an element of necessity in it. I have nothing else to do. I am one of those people who have no particular specialty. I am not excellent at anything, save perhaps for writing. If you are good at something, then that is what you should do.

Another source of anguish for me is that I am not even very good at writing. I am a good writer, in Swedish. Of that most assessors are in agreement. In Swedish I can write in a flowing, almost poetic, prose sprinkled with irony and humility. It is excellent for describing boorish subjects, which most of my books have been about. In English I am weighed down by mediocrity.

This makes me inherently more glum than Tove. Tove has ideas, not awesome writing skills. In both Swedish and English she blurts out her ideas in text. Lots and lots of ideas in lots and lots of text. It took me three days from when I started writing my last article until I submitted it to Tove. In those three days Tove started writing no less than seven articles of her own. Of course she did not finish all of them in that time and most of them will probably never be finished, much less published. But as an example of blurting out ideas I think it is outstanding. The point here is that while Tove has given up nothing by switching language I have lost one of my main edges. It does contribute to the gloom.

The reason I blog

When we created Wood from Eden I wrote some things about the premises of our blog. Both the about page and the very first blog post are sort of explanations to why we had the audacity to start a blog of our own (actually, both texts are mostly prevarications on the silly name). This was me writing poetic boorishness, only in English instead of Swedish. Luckily few have read these texts since they were published.

Even though I tried to prove otherwise we did not primarily start a blog to show the world my great English writing skills. That would most probably have been a waste of everyone's time. In fact, our motives were far more ulterior.

Both Tove and I are writers. Very unsuccessful, but still writers. Occasionally we have done paid freelance work but most of the time we have written books that we have published ourselves. Self-publishing books is difficult. People seldom find them and read them. Spending more than a year on researching and writing a book only to see the world ignore it is a bit frustrating. But at least it kept us busy.

In 2021 we were struck by luck. Due to a very complicated series of occurrences we found ourselves with unique never before published source material to a famous Swedish news story. We wrote a book on it with high expectations only to see it go the same way as our previous work. Hardly anyone read it.

That is when we, or at least Tove, decided that we should never write a book in Swedish again. If we could not make it with the perfect source material we had, we would never make it. End of chapter.

What do you do if you can not write books in your native language anymore? You write books in English of course. Technically it should be just the same: You write text, format it as a book and send it to a printer. But Tove said it was much more difficult to break into the English-speaking market than the Swedish-speaking ditto. I was bound to believe her. In Sweden we might have had a hostile establishment against us but we still had contacts, both high and low, and an intimate knowledge of Swedish culture and hence Swedish social media.

This all looked intimidating. But the ever resourceful Tove knew how to handle the situation. The trick was to first get famous, then the future books would sell themselves. And the best way for us to get famous was to start a blog. In fact she had already seen this done. A blog she read by one Freddie deBoer had been so successful that Mr DeBoer was headhunted by a literary agent and given generous remuneration for writing a book about a subject he already knew.

For this reason we started Wood from Eden, the blog you are now reading. Of course there were other reasons as well. It is great training to write regularly in English, good if you want to some day write a book in English. A blog is also an excellent venue for publishing unripe ideas that you want to test in the wild. Coming up with new ideas is one of the things we do most out here in the woods, so having an arena for them is no bad thing. But the main reason was the hunt for fame and fortune, or at least a future where our ideas were taken seriously and ideally gave us an income too.

All together now

This kind of ambition is of course not unique in any way. I hardly ever read a blog but from the few I have seen (all of them from Substack, if it makes a difference) it seems like the hunt for fame and fortune is the major incentive for most of them. This might also play a part in the 6 months bursts of activity. If you have not had any success for 6 months you will probably have more luck seeking fame and fortune by some other route.

The quest for personal gain is of course not a negative in itself. The market economy is driven by individuals seeking to maximize profit. And who does not like the prospect of making money from something they like doing, like writing down whatever they are currently interested in? As a means of making a living it should be very attractive. And the proliferation of Substack writers is proof enough of that.

If everyone is doing it, the possibilities of actually making a living of it diminishes. This might be where Tove and I have our real competitive advantage. We are used to writing things very few people read, we have been doing it for 15 years already. And we are used to living on such limited means that we hardly need an income. That makes our staying power more or less infinite. We could be the most successful of the unsuccessful bloggers simply by remaining. If you want to get rid of us you might have to conjure forth that book contract.