babble

This was originally posted as a response to the post The calm before the storm? (and some of its comments) over at The Long and Winding Road. I feel it’s important enough to re-post here, because i think it clarifies a bit of what i was trying to convey in my last post, maybe even take it a step further.

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Outside of that little bloggy vay-cay i took a while back, i’ve been subscribed to every FA blog i’ve been able to find for about a year or so. A few months ago, it wasn’t uncommon for me to step away from the computer for a day and come back to 50-7 new FA blog posts. Now? It’s more like 10-20, maybe 30 on a good day. I don’t have the hard numbers to back that up, and honestly don’t really want to devote a few hours of my free time to get them. But if someone wants to challenge me on it, i just might, because i’m occasionally contrary and spiteful like that. So IMO/IME, it’s slowing down. Your mileage may vary, hence the “maybe it’s happening somewhere that i’m not looking” bit.

Now, if there are less active posters that’s a good and/or a bad thing. On one hand, it could mean that FA is becoming less revolutionary, less alien, more socially acceptable - that’s awesome. On the other hand, especially for people who came in during the swell of activity, it can feel isolating, like a let-down; for the people just now finding it, i imagine it could come across as particularly frustrating. And as someone else said, new people wanting to talk about concepts that are new to them (but older to people who’ve been involved longer) can find it frustrating. I think the blog format is problematic in this regard; sure, i can find a good blog and sift through all the archives to find the answers to the questions i’ve got, but the medium doesn’t really lend itself to that sort of research. This is the internet: people want their answers fast and furious. They don’t want to have to go back through 10 pages of blog posts to find something that speaks to them.

Maybe people need to see this talked about somewhere other than blogs; maybe it’s time to set up a more resource-based website, CMS style. Maybe “moving on from the Fatosphere” means “taking it to another front”. If blogs are where the action is, why write a book? Because it’s another front, another arena. So the Fatosphere isn’t the entirety of the FA movement, and i think that’s a good thing. The “what now or what next” of my post was less about “i’m done with FA: what cause can i back This Week?” and more “okay, so what other forms or formats can i delve into (other than this blog o’ mine) to work on fat acceptance issues?” This is still an issue near and dear to my heart, and to see someone suggest otherwise feels… unpleasant. Frankly, it adds to the feeling of isolation and persona non grata that i’ve been feeling for months now, even though i am sure that was not what was intended.

As the community becomes larger, it becomes more insular - as that happens we have to wonder if we’re really just talking to ourselves. Some people have created or found their niches, and that’s great! I’m happy for them and wish them well. For those of us who don’t feel welcome in those niches (for reasons real or imagined) or don’t know where those niches even are, we’re left to wonder where to go and what to do about it. Which is, at least partially, what my post was about. (The “wanting to delete my blog” bit was partly due to sheer frustration of “holy crap this blog software is frustrating the pee out of me”.)

Is it the calm before the storm? Maybe. I’m not sure. Maybe it is, or maybe it’s an indication that we need to move away from blogs (individual soap boxes) and towards actual community-based software (forums, CMS, etc). Or maybe it means that we need to find ways to get better organized off-line as well - start creating local groups and meet-ups, start taking the messages out of binary and into the streets. Hell, maybe it’s all of the above.