Sparrowpost Returns
After a long hiatus, Sparrowpost.net is back online in a new Wordpress blog format. I hope that this revised structure will make it easy for everyone to contribute, and make it harder for the dreaded spambots to take over the site (it was the spambots incessant posting of Russian Porn on the forum that shut the site down the last time). I’m excited to have the site back online, but on the way here I did have my doubts about the worthiness of this rather time-consuming hobby.
In the year that the site been down, the mainstream media picked up its coverage of environmental issues and green became the color of a new brand of conspicuous consumption. Having a blog about the “environment” seemed redundant when there were so many other great sites and media outlets doing the same thing (see the blogroll below). To try to grapple with the redundancy of Sparrowpost, I considered two different tactics. First, I thought I should specialize. Maybe I should do a niche blog that would only be about the environment in San Diego (my home), or about living without paper products, or about making delicious preserves from native plants. Not having seen any blogs on these topics, this seemed like a potential way to avoid obsolescence.
Alternately, I thought that my site might be better if it were integrated with pre-existing web structures. I thought about just spending my time contributing to websites that are already out there, or perhaps of relocating Sparrowpost to MySpace so as to take advantage of the popularity of social networking sites.
After some consideration, though, I realized that neither of these options felt right. If I were to make Sparrowpost a site dedicated to a particular niche, I would inevitably lose former readers who weren’t interested in living a life without paper products, or only eating foods harvested from San Diego canyons. When I considered the second option, I realized that if Sparrowpost were to move onto a social networking site, it would inevitably lose readers who wouldn’t feel comfortable logging into MySpace or Facebook. Losing a few readers shouldn’t really be such a big deal, but for me, somehow, it was.
And I realized that this was because all of my readers are my friends, or family, or people who are the friends of my family, etc. I realized that the only reason most people had read my site in the first place was because they knew me. You’ve read this far because you’re a friend of mine, and you might be inclined to post something yourself because other people you know might read it.
When people talk about web phenomena like moveon.org, they often ask what it takes for political organizing that happens on the web to jump the virtual divide and become political action in the real world. I agree that there often seems to be a disconnect between the things we read and write on the Internet, and the way things pan out in our workaday lives. I hope that the personal nature of this website helps to bridge this gap, by making DIY environmentalism seem less “out there” and more doable in the day to day.
Thankfully, Sparrowpost isn’t just about the environment (note the VERY un-environmentally friendly Sugar Skull Craft project). Now when you register for Sparrowpost, you can leave comments AND be an author yourself. One of the things that shut the site down before was the difficulty of producing all that content alonae… so I hope you will contribute. All submissions (minus the Russian porn) are welcome.
