The fragmentation I see today has all but killed real online communities. It reminds me of the Flash kid's complaint in The Incredibles: if everybody is special, then nobody is. Frankly, I don't have the time or the inclination to go running around like a demented trick or treater to everybody's front door, particularly when (let's get real) most people are handing out the same candy corn. I'd rather go down to the piazza or the neighborhood coffee shop and talk with others as a group about whatever the common interests of that collective happen to be. For the personal stuff, I talk to my friends one-on-one, and that's how I found out who saw Iron Man this weekend and whose father died. It's private, it's human, it's personal, and it's dignified.
So I had given up on the diary blogs. I don't like reading them and I certainly don't want to write one. Yet I am writing a blog again. Why? It's this guy: Loren Weisman. Loren writes one of the most important music blogs on MySpace, and a few months ago he started posting a mirror here at Yuku (where, my personal bias, it is INFINITELY more readable). Loren's efforts reminded me that blogs can be about something.
It just doesn't get much better than someone with passion, knowledge, and experience stepping up and sharing it. It also doesn't get much better than hearing sense. So much of the net has been built up around the mores of a high school cafeteria. Not there, in Loren's blog you'll find nothing but the view from the real world: Someone whose endorsement is worth anything isn't going to just give it to you because you want it. You've got to be worth endorsing and you've got to give back.
If you've been wandering the cyberwasteland where kiddies believe a friend is something you acquire by clicking a link and displaying an avatar on your profile, it's a true oasis.
