I spent some time today going through my
Feedly and unfollowing blogs that had either been discontinued or had been inactive for a long time. There were a few blogs that no longer existed, and one URL that now leads to a page about anti–hair loss products for men (the greatest irony being the blog had been called "Forever Young: A YA Lit Blog"...well, I guess that's
one way to try to stay forever young, eh?) And then there were some bloggers whose last post was a declaration that they would not be blogging anymore, or would be taking a hiatus, etc.
But I was actually kind of shocked at the large number of bloggers who simply seemed to have vanished into the mists of cyberspace, never to be seen again. Bloggers who hadn't posted in over a year, but whose last post gave no indication that they'd be up and leaving.
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| Maybe they read this? |
Which made me wonder...what happened to them? Are they okay? Are they
just super busy with work/school/life? Are they ever coming back?
The thing is, we don't tend to notice a lack of something. We notice when somebody posts, yes. If they haven't posted in a long time, we may go, "Oh! It's a new post from So-and-So! Man, it's been a while!" But the absence of activity does not raise the same flag, and so we continue on, reading new posts from other bloggers and forgetting all about good old what's-her-name who hasn't uttered a peep since February 2011.
And once you do notice, then how do you respond? Online friendships are a tricky thing. Unless you know the blogger really well, you can hardly just call them up and go, "WHERE ARE YOU?" You can shoot them an e-mail or tweet or comment, sure, but you don't want to go overboard and be perceived as some kind of weird stalker.
So, this post is a tribute to all the disappearing or disappeared bloggers. Think about it for a moment. Which bloggers do you know who have faded from the blogosphere? Who do YOU miss? And how do you react when a blogger friend just suddenly seems to fall off the face of the planet?
