I’m finding that bits and pieces of history are repeating themselves for me and I thought I’d dip my toes back into the blogging pond a little deeper with an observation or two about the deja vu moments I’ve been having.
Once upon a time, in the online days before the web, I found myself in an online community of science fiction and fantasy authors. It was the SF/F SIG on Delphi, back when there were only a handful of broad-based online places for sf folks to gather. Compuserve, Genie, and Delphi. There was a regular weekly chat session (all text-based back then) and authors like Mike Resnick, Gardner Dozois, Jack Chalker, George Effinger, Pat Cadigan, Orson Scott Card, and others I’ve lost to the fog of age would socialize, and maybe do a little business. It was a bit much for a mere reader like me to wrap my brain around. Here were a whole bunch of Big Name Authors, just a keyboard away. I have to admit I was a little awe-struck for weeks. These were the people who wrote the stories that I spent my hard-earned cash on, for pete’s sake. They had a different vocabulary than I did, they spoke about people and things that I was ignorant about, and I felt like I would never find my own voice among these masters of voice.
Then one week, Pat Cadigan sent me a hello, you’re awfully quiet kind of private message. Whoa. An author spoke to me! I responded and she replied. Woohoo! Things began to change. Pat fed me a lot of little bits of information that I would otherwise have never known, I did some research into sf fandom to learn its history and language, and my shyness about being among a bunch of Big Name Authors began to fade. (I don’t think I’ve ever thanked you for that, Pat. Well, better late than never. Thank you!) As I found my voice and started contributing to the conversations, an amazing thing happened. All those Big Name Authors turned into real human beings.
I’d learned online behavior back when ASCII was all you had, and part of that old school etiquette was to lurk long enough to understand the dynamics of the group you wanted to join, and only when you felt like you wouldn’t come across like a complete buffoon did you start making your presence known by contributing. (Not that there weren’t plenty of buffoons out there, but some people just never RTFM and dive right in…) I learned enough about the other participants and how their world fit together that one day I just started talking (well, typing) and I was welcomed into the group without hesitation. I have a lot of fond memories about that time…
Over the course of weeks and months, I realized that my earlier awe at being among Big Name Authors was, well, uninformed. Not that these folks weren’t Big Name Authors (they were) or didn’t deserve accolades for their work (they did), but that for the most part they were people who did one thing for a living, or part of a living, and that I did something else for a living. They had bills to pay, illnesses to deal with, relationships to maintain, anxieties, fears, joys, and all the rest that makes up the non-making-a-living part of life for everyone. They weren’t so much different than me, or anyone. The big difference was that they wrote and wrote regularly and wrote well. It was a revelation that has shaped my view of “celebrities” ever since.
You’re probably wondering how this little trip down memory lane relates to web celebrities. I have a sneaking suspicion that the Big Name Bloggers, like Hugh MacLeod, Robert Scoble, Michael Arrington, Guy Kawasaki, Seth Godin, Chris Pirillo, Jeff Jarvis, and many more, aren’t all that different than me, or anyone, either. The big difference is that they actually blog and do so regularly and blog well. And as much as I enjoy what they have to say (most of the time), I’m not in awe of any of them. And I don’t think I should be. Respectful of what they do? You bet. Thankful for their insight? Of course. Wide-eyed and starstruck? Nope.
Another observation about web celebrities is that, for the most part, they are big fish in a relatively small pond, just as genre authors are. Want a quick reality check? Go out and randomly ask a dozen different people who any of the above bloggers are. Or any of the writers, for that matter. Odds are that most of the names will draw either blank stares or complete guesses. For those of us who swim in the ponds, those names have meaning. But to the rest of the world, they’re just other people you don’t know. That’s not a judgement of any kind. It’s just a statement of the context and the reality. Sometimes it helps to step back and remember that life happens offline, too.
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