2024: The year in review – Part 2: Blogging

Our very first post of 2024 set out a number of predictions for the year ahead; I tried to keep them vague enough to encompass a range of possible outcomes, but even with that precaution I still mostly ended up being well wide of the mark. My hopes that the conflicts in Palestine, Ukraine, and Sudan might wind down proved to be naively optimistic, with the genocide in Gaza in particular expanding to a horrific scale. I did foresee the demise of the Conservative government in the UK, but perhaps overestimated how much would change under Labour. I thought Joe Biden would be reelected, and backed the 49ers for the Superbowl.

Given that unpromising start, it was perhaps inevitable that my blogging output over the following twelve months would be less than stellar. I did manage more than twice as many posts as in 2023, and our traffic was up a bit too, but the quality could charitably be described as uneven. This is reflected in the statistics; our top ten most read are an essentially random selection from the archive:

1. Eve of destruction
2. Indefinite article
3. Futurama
4. That gum you like is going to come back in style
5. Working for the Linden Dollar
6. The Linden Principle
7. Leap of imagination
8. Change don’t come easy
9. How ‘bout them Cubs?
10. Seriously?

My favourite posts of the year mostly came in a rare burst of energy in the spring, with another flurry around the November election; some are upbeat, though a slightly disturbing number of them concern the death of well-known figures:

• Crypto Justice
• Kurt Cobain RIP
• Out of juice
• Steve Albini RIP
• Trump on trial
• No campaign for old men
• Autumnal disquiet
• Trump resurgent?

One trend that has definitely accelerated over the past three or four years is a reduction in our geographical reach; there was a time when we had readers in over 100 nations, but now just about all our traffic comes from the UK, with even the US and other anglophone countries dropping off sharply this year. We still have a few visitors from foreign lands though; here are the top ten:

1. United Kingdom
2. United States
3. China
4. Germany
5. Canada
6. Portugal
7. India
8. Netherlands
9. Singapore
10. Vietnam

There are many topics I should have written more about; the aforementioned wars, political and economic developments in Europe and the US, the rising influence of AI and other technological novelties, to name but a few. Even if I give myself a pass for avoiding such gloomy fare, I could still have posted a bit more frequently on cultural issues.

A particularly glaring omission is the complete lack of commentary on Second Life, despite it ostensibly being the prime subject of this whole project. The new owners of the platform finally got around to releasing a mobile viewer earlier in the year, and, since I still pay nearly $100 annually to maintain my premium membership, I was actually given advance access, and thus had the opportunity to be among the first to review it. I did get as far as logging in, and wandered around the grid for a while, but I wasn’t really inspired to write anything. I found the interface as hard to master as I had when I first tried the PC version back in 2007, and once I did get the hang of it there was still the same old SL problem; nobody is there, and there’s nothing to do. To be fair, I was using an old iPhone with a tiny screen, so I probably didn’t get the best visual results; I might give it another look if I upgrade my phone next year.

Thinking about the twelve months ahead it’s hard to know what to expect. If there’s one thing I’m sure of after the last few years it’s that I’m inching ever closer to Socratic Wisdom; perhaps 2025 will be the year when I can finally proclaim that all I know is that I know nothing. That said, I will resolve to try a little harder on the blogging front, if for no other reason than to give me something to look back on next December.

On that hopeful note I’ll wish all our readers a happy New Year, and may it find you healthy and prosperous.

2023: The year in review – Part 2: Blogging

This year hasn’t been one of our more productive; we just about managed one post a month, and a fair number of those were fillers pushed out at the deadline to keep the streak going.

I hinted at the reason for this in one of my rare insightful pieces in the summer; the disconnect between the objectively terrible state of the world, and the largely carefree nature of my personal existence. Things have only gotten worse since then, both internationally, with genocide in Palestine, fascists coming to power in Latin America and Europe, and the abandonment of even the pretence of action on climate change, and domestically, as the rabble of spivs and fantasists that passes for our government fight amongst themselves while the country slides into oblivion. Still my life trundles on, more or less agreeably. Add in the fact that advancing age has deepened my predisposition towards existential rumination, and it is perhaps not too surprising that composing light-hearted missives on culture and politics sometimes seems more than a little pointless.

Despite the paucity of new content we still get a surprising amount of traffic; not so much that I could call myself an influencer, but enough to keep me from giving up altogether. Of course it’s more than likely that most of these readers are actually bots intent on scraping our archive to compile a training set for the next generation of Artificial Intelligence; if so, at least I can console myself with the thought that I have made some contribution to the education of our future robotic overlords.

Anyway, here are our top ten most-read posts of the year:

1. There is no land beyond the Volga
2. Change don’t come easy
3. How ’bout them Cubs?
4. Virtual alchemy
5. Trumpocalypse now
6. Guiding Light
7. Tom Verlaine RIP
8. Comfortably fungible
9. They were defeated, we won the war
10. Summer torpor

Of these only our brief note on the passing of Television frontman Tom Verlaine is from the last twelve months; the rest are essentially random picks from as long ago as 2010. My favourite post of the year, from a limited field, is this one about the crypto implosion.

One disappointment has been the contraction of our international appeal; 87% of our traffic now comes from either the UK or the US, with the remaining 13% split between another 25 nations, quite a change from the days when we had readers in over 100 countries. Here are the top ten:

1. United Kingdom
2. United States
3. China
4. Canada
5. Hong Kong
6. New Zealand
7. Portugal
8. Finland
9. Singapore
10. Germany

So that was 2023. This time last year I suggested that we might start posting more Second Life-related content, since I had just downloaded the SpeedLight app, which promised access to the grid via my iPhone, but sadly it turned out to be a bit rubbish, so I never really got into it, though I did renew my SL subscription when it fell due in October. An official Linden Lab mobile viewer is reportedly set for imminent release, so I guess it’s possible that we might have some more metaverse news to report in the coming months. Failing that I expect we will keep turning out infrequent dispatches of lightweight political and cultural commentary, to a more or less completely indifferent world.

I’m off to meet some friends and ring in the New Year, so all that remains is to wish our readers a happy and prosperous 2024.

2022: The year in review – Part 2: Blogging

There were plenty of blogable events in 2022, though most of them were rather discouraging. Top of my list of reasons to be fearful was of course the war in Ukraine, though that perhaps betrays my Euro-centricity; the civil conflict in Ethiopia has been equally devastating, despite receiving little coverage in the western media, and dozens of other wars rage on across the world. Other worrying developments included the assault on reproductive rights in the US, political chaos and government dysfunction in the UK, global economic uncertainty, and, rumbling on ominously in the background, the still largely unaddressed climate crisis. It does feel like the worst of the covid-19 pandemic has passed, in the UK at least, though the current resurgence of the virus in China may kick the whole cycle off again.

Is there any cause for optimism? The overturning of Roe v Wade did galvanise progressive opinion stateside, which, judging by the midterm results at least, seems to have put a brake on the worst excesses of Trumpism. Meanwhile, over here, the Tories’ attempts to impose more austerity on an exhausted working class has provoked a rash of industrial unrest on a scale not seen since the 80s, so a shift to the left in time for the next election is on the cards. There is a world beyond the US and the UK of course, and a multitude of social justice movements, particularly in South America, give plenty of reasons to be hopeful.

Away from politics, it was fun to watch the crypto implosion unfold, though I’m still mystified by how easily incompetent hucksters like Sam Bankman-Fried managed to persuade apparently intelligent investors that their half-baked Ponzi schemes were anything other than a scam. On a higher plane, I was encouraged to see the success of NASA’s Artemis lunar mission; I may yet see a permanent moon base within my lifetime.

I did keep up semi-regular commentary on all this, but overall 2022 wasn’t one of my more productive years, as reflected in our ten most viewed posts, which are almost entirely from the archive:

1. There is no land beyond the Volga
2. Watching the Okhrana
3. The Linden Principle
4. Oscar predictions 2022
5. Second Life demographics – a brief review
6. On Second Life and addiction
7. Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space
8. War in Ukraine
9. Endgame forecast
10. Caledonia rising

I have long given up trying to analyse why these old posts fall in and out of favour, but I did wonder if our 2013 piece about the Battle of Stalingrad had come out top due to the Red Army once more being involved in fighting in Europe, though of course in rather less honourable circumstances than in 1943.

Of the posts we did produce this year, I was quite proud of these:

• 22022022
• Fox on the loose
• Fog of war
• Fifteen Years Ago
• Recession gloom
• Power crisis
• Jean-Luc Godard RIP
• Sterling work
• Déjà Boris
• BBC centenary
• Martian forward
• Unpacific heights
• The art of patience

Our global reach has shrunk a little from last year, with visitors from 39 countries. The UK and the US still provide the bulk of our traffic, but the numbers from China are encouraging, and non-anglophone nations make up half of the top ten:

1. United Kingdom
2. United States
3. China
4. Canada
5. Australia
6. India
7. France
8. Japan
9. Hong Kong
10. Puerto Rico

So much for the past; what can SLS readers look forward to in the future? For a while I’ve been thinking we should shift away from the political and economic themes that have been our main focus over the last few years, and try to pivot back to our roots in virtual-world commentary, but I’ve been reluctant to make the investment in the updated hardware that I would need to start logging in to Second Life again. However I recently discovered that there is a new mobile TPV available, SpeedLight, which I’ve downloaded, and intend to try out over the next few days. Will this rekindle my love of SL and inspire me to new heights of dazzling analysis? Stay tuned to find out…