The web is at its best, for me, when it yields the unexpected, scented with sweet serendipity. I see myself at odds with the bulk of where the web is sliding, as a Gimme Machine, that we just keep kicking until one gets the desired shiny candy.
The web of machines, not the web of people.
Through maybe the most unlikely of chances, this week, after 22 years of discovering Francois Lachance, who I knew as “The Comment Blogger”, I got to meet.
Dial it back to the early 2000s, the heady days of optimism, the power of personal writing online. Blogmania. I discovered François Lachance through the blog (see? where did it go?) of Matthew Kirschenbaum at the University of Maryland (Go Terps).
Counter to the 2003 crowd, what Kirschenbaum described was someone who did not write in his own blog, but expressed himself in the comment spaces of other people’s blogs. It struck me as sheer brilliance.
I referenced Lachance many times – in a “BlogSpop” resource, in multiple blog posts, in presentations:
It instigated a semi-regular practice of muzzling my own blog for a week, and devoting that time to blog in the comment space of other bloggers.
So that was then, what was this week?
After tuning into one of Jim Groom’s On Writing shows with Kathleen Fitzpatrick on Reclaim.tv I much belatedly added her blog to my RSS feeds. Through there or maybe Mastodon, I saw that she was a guest on a University of Bath webinar on Generosity and Leadership in Higher Education, which I am so glad I caught for many reasons. It led me to buy a book Kathleen referenced Lessons from Plants that fits so well to the new metaphor I am trying to infuse to the OEGlobal Awards for Excellence.
So I am tuned in more to Kathleens insightful, and also semi-personal as blogs should be, writing, so I followed again from my Feed Reader her post about being named a Distinguished Professor at Michigan State University. This definitely calls for a comment.
So going to her post, look who I see (also you Sarah Honeychurch, you got there first)
I had to see if this was THE Francois Lachance, so I replied:
Excuse me, but are you the Francois that Matthew Kirschenbaum described as a “comment blogger”? That was a huge inspiration for me https://cogdogblog.com/2006/02/commenting-as-blogging/
To which he replied, “One and the same. You have a good memory.”
Yes, I met Francois, in person, in the blog space of Kathleen’s blog post. And it goes farther, as Kathleen shared a 21 year old comment, one of many on her blog, from Francois.
And this all hammers home, for the 90 millionth time, what the difference is in the conversations in blog space. They are like chatting in a cafe, or on a street corner, or in the line at a conference. This is what has been forsaken by so many for the Big Tent of Social Media, where we all clamor and preen to the masses, hoping maybe for the click of a like button?
It’s not about going back, nor wiil blogging and commenting likely ever hit the fervor of 2003, but its far from “dead” its just not in the limelight.
It’s still there.
Nice to meet you, Francois.
Featured Image: Mystery Man flickr photo by cogdogblog shared under a Creative Commons (BY 2.0) license
