The End of Blogging?

Interior of George Bernard Shaw’s writing hut
In an age of tweets and Instagram pics, is there a place for blogging? Back in May 2004 I wondered if I should blog or not. It meant getting a lot of feedback, perhaps unwanted interactions with people who wanted to start a fight or slam me for being gay.
Through this blog I have met some of my dearest friends, people who I now sit with in their homes. We share meals, sorrows, and secrets. Through blogging we built community for people who survived conversion therapy. I wrote about this for the journal, Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide in my piece Ex-Gay Survivors Go On-Line.
In the past decade, the Internet has exploded with social networking opportunities for countless groups of ex-gay survivors, who communicate through various blog sites (first LiveJournal and later Blogger and WordPress), the Gay Christian Network or GCN (gaychristian.net), and most recently Facebook. In often heartbreaking and raw entries, they have shared their narratives. They have validated the experiences of people who have not been able to live as “recovered” homosexuals but haven’t been able to jump into mainstream GLBT culture either, often finding this community to be hostile to their faith. These forums have also given people outside of the ex-gay community a chance to peek into the ex-gay movement and the travails of those recovering from its deceptions.
Through GCN, I met Christine Bakke, a blogger and former ex-lesbian living in Colorado (risingupwhole.blogspot.com). Like many who recently surfaced from the ex-gay underground, Christine was a woman without a community other than those few people who knew her by an anonymous screen name.
These days I produce a monthly podcast, Citizens Climate Radio, and I write personal essays for journals and anthologies. I am also active on Twitter and Facebook where I share articles I think are important and look at the links friends and trusted sources share. No one seems to leave comments on blog posts much anymore, but the discussions carry on Facebook threads, responses to twitter posts and retweets, and through the shorthand of gifs and memes.
So I am wondering, does the blog matter any more? I am happy to continue sharing resources, book reviews, personal observations, and discussion topics. I get loads of press releases about LGBTQ issues, events, books, and video games. I could share theses, but there is a lot of content out there already.
So, if you are reading this and find this blog useful, let me know. What would you like to see here? If not, perhaps it is time to put my efforts into other platforms. I’m curious to see if there is anyone out there…
🙂