Blogging doomed, or something

A couple of weeks ago some gink going by the name Troy McClure had a piece at BaltimoreSun.com prognostrilcating on the future of blogs and bloggering. The Drunkablog will attempt to perform an old and revered technique on McClure's article. The ancients called it "feesking."

A one-line paragraph gets us off to a snappy start:

This could be the year we finally quit talking about blogs.

Already you know Troy's full of it. It's been years since the mention of blogging has gotten me anything but violent threats and sick psychosexual abuse, even from those I'm closest to. But continue:

Amid the continued popularity of the phenomenon, there are mounting signs that blogging is fast reaching its saturation point. Blog watcher Technorati was tracking 57 million blogs at the end of October, adding about 100,000 new blogs to its list each day.

Fifty-seven million blogs? Here comes the penis panic again. No, fight it off, old yowser. Your blog is unique. Troy:

No one expects that pace to hold, and technology analyst Gartner Inc. believes that this will be the year that blogging peaks.

In a report released a few weeks ago, the firm predicted that blogging will level off in the first half of 2007 at about 100 million bloggers.

The mind boggles--at least mine does, but then it boggles at almost anything--one hundred million people blabbing away about their stupid dogs and their stupid trips and their stupid Ward Churchill fixations. Troy:

And in further signs that the luster might be fading [no! not the luster!--ed.], the firm says 200 million bloggers have abandoned their sites. "A lot of people have been in and out of this thing," Daryl Plummer, chief Gartner fellow, told the Associated Press. "Everyone thinks they have something to say, until they're put on stage and asked to say it."

Well, this Chief Gartner fellow is wrong about that, certainly. Bloggers aren't put on stage, they leap on stage, or rather, attempt to leap on stage, usually missing by several feet. Luckily for li'l bloggers like me, there's no one around to witness the pratfall.

So as the number of new blogs slows and the number of abandoned blogs mounts, what will become of blogging?

Those poor little abandoned blogs. Won't you adopt several hundred thousand of them today?

Here are a couple of predictions.

Oh, no.

First, as blogging slows down, the media will inevitably lose interest in the phenomenon. (Don't expect "you" and your blog to repeat in 2007 as Time's Person of the Year) [Troy, you are a simpering suck--ed.] . The great ambivalent mass of bloggers - those who have little to add to the larger online conversation but by sheer magnitude drown out more deserving voices - are likely to fade away.

Blogging will have a been-there-done-that feel for a lot of people. Many of the bad bloggers are likely to fall silent. Others are likely to not even bother in the first place.

Troy's a bloody sage.

But the committed, the talented and the entertaining bloggers will continue on. And those with a message worth spreading will find it a lot easier to gain an audience with less ambient chatter to contend with.

Down with ambient chatter!

As the spotlight fades even further, the terms "blog" and "blogosphere" are likely to go the way of 'cyberspace" and "information superhighway."

That totally doesn't follow. Troyward:

The quaint "blog" label has long outlived its usefulness, and it also perpetuates a certain stigma that relegates bloggers to the second tier of the mass media, regardless of their respective influence, exposure or talent.

Oh, blogs are relegated to the second tier by a perpetual stigma, are they Troy? Well, lots of bloggers think there's a perpetual stigma called bias that relegates "first-tier" mass media to history's dumpster behind the Notel Motel on the seamy streets of Anytown, USA. Jerk.

Labeling people as bloggers also glosses over the complex ways they are harnessing the Internet and the diverse makeup of the people using these emerging technologies . . . .

Liberating online voices from the "blog" label would enable the audience to concentrate on the message and not the medium and judge each person's Web site on its merits and not on its placement within "the blogosphere."

"Diverse." "Emerging." "Liberating." What pompous crap. And who but a total maroon would judge a blog by its "placement" within the blogosphere, whatever that means?

Ultimately if blogging is to survive as a viable communication platform, that's what must happen.

Oh it must, must it?

And that appears to be the direction we're heading.

Your mother must be so proud of you, Troy.

As a social phenomenon, blogging may fall out of favor in 2007.

And that's great news for bloggers.

Two snappy one-line paragraphs in a row.

I don't like it.

Update: Sorry, the author's name isn't Troy McClure, it's Troy McCullough. Natural mistake.