Before the days of Twitter and Facebook, a few whining paragraphs made a story on my blog. Since everyone had their own blog, the online world was quite “decentralized.”

When you want to respond to something, you visit a particular blog and leave a carefully crafted message. You might find a string of people responding to the same story and form a mini conversation or even an online party.

Then there came social networks. People are herded as “friends” and become centralized on a timeline. Timeline flows and washes messages and comments away like there’s nothing important.

It’s now easier to respond to a message, and you don’t even have to write a word since a 👍 is all you need.

We reply, we respond, we give thumbs or claps, but we are not making as many “intellectual conversations” as before.

After some clean-up, my 7,000 stories went down to around 2,000 with relatively substantial content.

One of the reasons I could write so many was that I made a lot of intellectual conversations, and I was always able to find news topics from them and have a healthy dose of stimulation from my readers, so I kept writing almost every day.

Now I follow the Facebook and Twitter timelines and subscribe to about 100 blogs and news sites. But I have a feeling that I was dragged by topics and news, not the exchange of ideas.

This is not good. I need conversations, stimulation, and passion to churn out meaningful, inspiring stuff.

In my blogosphere, I am still one of the most diligent writers in Taiwan. People either make short bursts on Facebook or become media writers, as blogging is already passé.

Hardly a conversation. How regrettable. Make one, anyone?

Originally written on Aug 17, 2017.