And a Sauerkraut Starter

For most of us who blog, I suspect, it is a relatively thankless pursuit. WordPress “Stats and Insights” makes it depressingly clear to me that only a small band of people subscribe to my blog and of these I am guessing only a handful read it regularly and with attention. Part of this may be a consequence of the variability of my subject matter. For example I have written occasionally on food and health. That has appeared to generate quite a lot of interest and been the source of one or two subscriptions. But those hopeful subscribers may have been very disappointed when my next post  was on proportional representation or the optimal number of political parties to make democratic politics function well or something else that has momentarily caught my interest. 

If I were in it for the big time, I’d drop the politics and the passing distractions and just focus on food.  Well why not? It could be fun to share my latest ideas on sauerkraut and how it’s possible, in no time at all, to whip up a starter based on the doubtful ingredient of live fermented cabbage mixed in with some spring onion, pickled peppers, a sprinkle of dried seaweed, and a little of anything else that comes to hand. I tried that out on some guests today and it went down surprisingly well… or maybe they were just being polite. Regardless, whether you love it or hate it, it’ll do wonders for your microbiome. But the well of my culinary knowledge is not a deep one, and it is mostly other things which feed my impulse to share my thoughts with a world that is directing its attention elsewhere.

But then, like all creative or craft activities, blogging has its own rewards. It’s pleasing to work out ideas that might otherwise fester and an engaging challenge to present them in a way that may catch the attention of some curious wanderer in the netherworld of the Internet.  

I read a piece in the Guardian recently about the disappointment you should expect if you write and publish a book. Hamiliton Nolan tells us  “most books sell shockingly few copies…You  should not write a book to get rich or famous. That won’t happen.” However he goes on, from his own personal experience, to offer some more encouraging advice: 

You should write a book because you have something to say. You should write a book because – long after all of your essays and blogposts and op-eds have been lost to time – that ragged, dusty hardcover book will still be sitting on the shelf of a library somewhere. And someone that you have never met, in a place that you have never been, can pick it up and look at it. And when you’re dead and buried and forgotten, that book, that tangible thing, will be read by a person, and the thing that you wanted to say will live on. That is enough….They might even like it. 

That’s a rather dismissive view of “essays and blogposts and op-eds” suggesting they are necessarily ephemeral, written for the moment and inevitably lost to posterity. So far as I am concerned my blog posts are already on the shelves of the vast library of the Internet. Indeed my blog “Stats and Insights” provides evidence that occasionally a new visitor to my shelf is sufficiently curious to pull out a post from a few years ago, blow off the dust, and take a look.  

It is probably safe to assume that all bloggers believe they have “something to say” and probably also that they are saying it with  style. I cannot exclude myself from such a slightly self satisfied self assessment, and yet I am also fairly sure that a failure in critical self awareness results in a good deal of what is being presented as wisdom in the blogosphere falling well short of that standard. Worse still a good deal is probably marred by a mixture of long windedness, pomposity and alternative facts.

But here’s the thing. Some of what’s out there is good and in many cases probably not getting the attention it deserves. Can something be done about this neglect?

There are already awards for bloggers but, so far as I can tell, they focus on existing big names and influencers. They are not of the kind that sift through the dross of the blogosphere in order to discover buried treasure. That’s a huge task and it’s hardly surprising that no one has taken it on. But artificial intelligence could offer a solution to this problem. 

I have taken to using ChatGPT to check my own blog posts with reference to spelling, grammar and readability. I don’t agree with all of its feedback. Occasionally it is just plain wrong, but it can also make very helpful suggestions. Provided with a brief specification of what is required,it delivers its feedback in about ten seconds flat. 

I am quite sure that, with a well written brief, ChatGPT could run through a hundred thousand blogs and deliver a shortlist of the most impressive work for a judging panel of real people to make a final adjudication. And if those judges think the short list unsatisfactory, then all they have to do is to tighten or adjust the brief and instruct ChatGPT to have another go. It never complains and willingly accepts correction.  

All it needs to make this happen is a sponsor. WordPress maybe would see it as in their interests to take on such a project but I am sure there could be other corporations interested in the idea. Like all awards, there would naturally be complaints about the winner and aspersions cast on the manner of drawing up the short list. Good  work will certainly be overlooked. But still I think the process would shine a light on an area of activity that deserves a little more attention. And if there was a category remotely descriptive of what defines my own blog activity, of course I’d enter. Who knows? I might get lucky. 

Endnotes

1] Envy, ego, pride and pain: what I learned from publishing my first book Hamilton Nolan