Blogging is Dead: Nobody Needs Writers we have Pictures

Nobody reads anymore.  Not print media, not blogs, not books, not contracts, not those annoying updates each time iTunes wants to update itself.  We don’t have time.  We don’t have time to make quality meals, or go hiking with our families, or repair the roof, so why add work?  Funny, how reading has become work.  It used to be entertainment and revolutionary and eye opening and dangerous and relaxing.  People thought is was corrupting the youth (especially the ladies) in the 1800s.  The Catholic Church was fissured by a mere posting of 95 complaints by Martin Luther in  1517.  Thomas Paine wrote a bunch of common sense statements that led to one of the most radical political changes the world had ever experienced.  Sticks and stones have hurt my bones, but words, words have hurt me more than any temporal physical pain.  And yet, we, in 2012, give words, the written word, no power. 

We’ve truncated the art form down to 140 characters, so we can tweet it to our friends.  Of course, language is supposed to change with time, it’s supposed to morph and evolve with each generation.  But it was never supposed to look like this----->

We’ve bastardized the sentence down from complex, to simple, to bullet points, to key points, to basic points, to symbols, and now, sadly, to pictures.  A picture was already worth a thousand words, but now people find the need to put one liners under pictures of cats like this: 

---Derp.  A word that isn’t even recognized as a word, is now the one word caption for a poor kitten that was probably poisoned by his owners to make for a good meme.  Don’t get me wrong, some of these are entertaining and funny and kind of creative.  But they’ve also taken the place of words.  The great dour comic Steven Wright once quipped about cats: "If toast always lands butter-side down, and cats always land on their feet, what happen if you strap toast on the back of a cat and drop it?"  Sadly, this kind of inventive humor is no longer funny unless associated with a corresponding picture. 

So, why am I venting?  Why am I starting a blog in 2012, when obviously blogs died in 2000, along with Pets.com and their low budget mascot?

See!!  I just did it.  I referenced something, then felt the need to show you what I was writing about.  It’s sick.  It’s like we’ve become six years old again, and we need to see Seuss’ Fox who loves Socks, instead of just reading about him.  When did we lose our imaginations.  Are we all just reading at a fourth grade reading level, and forever need illustrators to fill the void of our minds?
 

I remember a time before the internet (geez, that seems ages ago) when an illustration would help my mind.  We didn’t have access to billions of pictures, thousands of movies, and hundreds of channels on television.  To see Laura Ingall’s world, we needed these historical drawings of life in the old West.  And then we let these little visual aids paint a moving picture, more vivid and artistic than anything that could be filmed.  I think I’ve lost some of that ability.  But I haven’t lost my need to read a good book, to find an actual print newspaper and devour each section, to read an analysis of a new product, or album, or movie that took the writer more than ten seconds to compose.  I love scanning through my facebook account and seeing people post reviews of new media with thought provoking words like:  “Just saw the new Spiderman, BAM!!!”  Cause I would actually like to know why I should spend more money on a franchise of movies that has disappointed me each successive time.  I’d like to know why every few years these comic movies get made, their origin story changes.  Can you image if our own origin story could evolve with time, or with new directors, or whatever: “Son, I know I told you that you were conceived after an amazing ABBA concert in 1979, but I think you’re old enough to know, that I’m not actually your dad.  And your mom, is not actually your mom.  Your parents were aliens.  We didn’t meet your real parents.  You were adopted by a really nice set of aliens, who raised you after you were bit by a radioactive bat-like creature on your home planet of Tralfamadore.”

Actually Tralfamadore is an invented planet by an author name Kurt Vonnegut.  He wrote books.  His books had pages with information he made up from his experiences.  He’s dead now.  So why read his books?  Why read anybody’s books?  Why not just let Hollywood tell us their version with 30 frames per second in high definition 3D?  Isn’t that a better way to experience life?  Show don’t tell, right? 

I don’t know.  I know that almost no movie is ever as good as the book.  Sure it gets done faster, and makes a great follow up to a dinner date.  But it doesn’t give anything to the soul.  It doesn’t get wrapped up in your arteries and make your breathing hard, your thoughts in a tizzy, or question beliefs you once held to be truths. 

I’m saying all of this, because I just finished writing a book, and I feel that the story I told was original and universal, and while I’m deeply attached to the words within it, it would make a horrible transition to film.  Most of life is not televise-able.  And yet, we are apt to believe that reality television is how many people live.  But they don’t.  The gristle of life is chopped away by heartless editors, who care only about good television, and not good characters.  But books still care.  The newspaper still cares.  Many bloggers still care. But we are aging and becoming a forgotten demographic.   I’m afraid the youth of America is forgetting how to live outside of what's been aired on TV, cause they never spent the time to read about the billions of lives lived before them without visual aids.  I never lived on the prairie, but thanks to books, I know a lot about what a little girl experienced in the late 1800s. A picture is worth a thousand words, and if you read through this entire blog, you read  just over a thousand words; I hope it held more content than a picture of a cat.  But if it didn’t, this is for you:

This is my first true blog after years of posting numerous stupid points anonymously on other websites.  I won't lie, publishers want this kind of garbage.  They think people still read blogs, while I don’t.  Please prove me wrong, and read my blogs, and comment anything you’d like below.  I promise to keep my blogs light hearted, original, and somewhat humorous.  If you hate what I have to say, please comment so below. I have thick skin, I can take it.  Okay, don’t post if you like to comment on youtube.com videos, as people who comment there have demons possessing their keyboards.  Otherwise, bash or praise away.