Convergence, transmedia, and the death of comments.

During our sometimes-regular, sometimes-not phone calls, my sister Andrea and I often analyse social media, how it works, and what place it has in our lives. One of the things that has come up recently is how blog comments seem to be a thing of the past. It's not that readership has dropped, but while more people read my blog than they used to, less people leave a comment than they used to.

At first I thought it might be just me. I don't post as regularly as I once did, and I don't read as many blogs as I once did. Perhaps I killed the conversation all on my ownsome. But as I've wandered around my favourite blogging haunts, I've noticed what seems to be a trend. I know very little about anything, so this is just my personal observing skilz in action, but even on sites that boast readerships into the thousands and millions, the number of people engaging in conversations directly in response to blog posts via the comments section seems to have significantly and proportionately reduced. As an example, I watched a video on an MTV blog the other day and noted that it had thousands and thousands of views. But the comment box below the video was startlingly empty. This posed an interesting question: if comments are/were ever the way we measured success and/or interaction, what does a lack of comments tell us?

This semester, I've been taking Children's Media as one of my final classes, and one of the topics I've found most intriguing -- possibly because I'd already been thinking about it a bit (don't you love it when two different parts of your personal world come together?) -- is that of transmedia and convergence. If you're not familiar with either term, wikipedia it up, but in the meantime, an oversimplified summary (thanks to my lecturer, Dr Elizabeth Hale) could be that convergence is the delivery of content across multiple media platforms while transmedia is the creation of content across multiple platforms, with various media working together to create one story told in numerous places (the Lizzie Bennet Diaries is a perfect example of this). You'll likely be familiar with the concept, even if not with the terminology.

I think that convergence and transmedia could quite possibly hold the answer to why commenting is happening less while reading is happening more. Most bloggers no longer confine their blogging world to just, well, blogging. I'm a major dork and pretty old-fashioned with a lot of my approaches to communication, so my use of the internet is fairly standard, but even dorky old me tends to cross-post links to twitter, tumblr, and sometimes even instagram whenever I publish a new blog post, and many bloggers use pages on facebook to drive traffic to their blogs. Because I am talking about and sharing my blog post in media other than just my blog, readers tend to respond in kind. Someone might send an @reply on twitter, while another might leave a comment on my instagram account. Someone else might reblog a post on tumblr, while another texts me to add their thoughts. Less people are leaving comments, but it doesn't necessarily mean less people are engaging with the words.

The MTV video I mentioned earlier is powerful proof of this. I'd found the video initially by following a link from a tumblr post. The tumblr post itself was a gifset someone had created from the original video, and it had been reblogged tens of thousands of times. If reader involvement were gauged based on the comments at the blog post hosting the video, things look pretty grim. But many thousands of people had engaged with the media, just not in the form of commenting.

So while it might appear that commenting is dying off, engagement and reading is not. Content being delivered across a range of media means the conversation will be continued across a range of media, which is always a healthy thing.

Having said all that, if you're the commenting kind, keep it up. I love me a good comment conversation.

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Conversations:

• Amanda Holmes -- if you don't want to buy it new, try op shops. It's a classic!
• Asea -- I love your idea of reading one book per week for fun. Keep me posted on which ones you choose! (and which Hawkeye are you up to?)

March book haul:

Here's my (very belated) book haul for March! This month, along with some books I bought as gifts (not shown), I purchased:

Reboot by Amy Tintera. This was a completely spontaneous purchase, bought when I wandered into my local bookstore one Saturday looking for something fresh to read. I got chatting to the salespeople, two university-aged girls whose passion for young adult fiction is as zealous as my own. We flailed for probably half an hour about all kinds of books (sorry, other customers who were a little bit ignored) and one of the girls insisted I read this one. It's a zombie apocalypse story, but not the one you'd be expecting, nope, not at all. A bit too much romance for my tastes but I loved the fast pace and I loved/hated the unresolved ending. I want the second book immediately.

Where the Streets Had a Name by Randa Abdel-Fattah. I read Does My Head Look Big in This? a while back and really enjoyed its take on life for an Australian teenage girl growing up Muslim. This was on sale at a discount warehouse and I was shopping with my cousin and... into my little hands it went. I haven't read it yet, so stay tuned.

The Girl With All the Gifts by M.R. Carey. I've started this new little tradition lately: whenever I sell a piece of writing, I'll buy a new book and inscribe it with the title of the story that made its purchase possible. My children's short, Remember, bought this book for me, and don't think I didn't notice that the author and I have a little something in common. I've heard a lot of hype surrounding this book, so I'm keen to see what it's like.

Panic by Lauren Oliver. This is Lauren Oliver's newest and, after reading it, I have to say it's her best. The writing is phenomenal, reading more like literary fiction (think an Americanised version of Tim Winton's broken beachside lives) than the genre YA fiction I'd normally associate Lauren Oliver with. I hope to have a full review up sometime in the next whenever.

The Story of the Treasure Seekers by Edith Nesbit. This, just because a) I loved it so much as a child, b) the cover is delightful, and c) it was on a great sale. If you haven't read this story, you absolutely have to. The Railway Children is Nesbit's more popular work, but the Bastable family in Treasure Seekers are pure gold.

Hawkeye #s 17 and 18. Hawkeye is the only comic I buy regularly, and I pick it up whenever a new copy appears -- pick it up digitally, I mean, since physical comics in Australia are ridculously expensive and hard to find. Hawkeye is all about what happens when Clint Barton isn't working for the Avengers and most of the action centres around his grimy apartment block. The artwork is supreme and the storyline is so much fun -- an excellent blend of really poignant and really funny. If you're even remotely into comics, you should check it out.

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Conversations:

• Megschmegs -- YES! That happily-ever-after is the best part of all. *hearts*

The good, the bad, and the ugly-turned-beautiful:

The Gospel is bad news before it is good news. It is the news that man is a sinner, to use the old word, that he is evil in the imagination of his heart, that when he looks in the mirror all in a lather what he sees is at least eight parts chicken, phony, slob. That is the tragedy. But it is also the news that he is loved anyway, cherished, forgiven, bleeding to be sure, but also bled for. That is the comedy. And yet, so what? So what if even in his sin the slob is loved and forgiven when the very mark and substance of his sin and of his slobbery is that he keeps turning down the love and forgiveness because he either doesn't believe them or doesn't want them or just doesn't give a damn? In answer, the news of the Gospel is that extraordinary things happen to him just as in fairy tales extraordinary things happen.

 -- Frederick Buechner,  

Telling the Truth: the Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairytale

Happy Easter, all.

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Conversations:

• Andrea -- I see what you did there! Thanks for the censorship ;)
• Asea -- now I'm going to have to work on a nickname for you! ;) But oh YES to the whole avoiding-confrontation thing. This is my life exactly.
• BushMaid -- I totally agree with everything you said, and I have particularly felt that sentiment: "It can be a curse to care too much." Our weaknesses, however, are often also the same things that provide our strengths. There's a plus and a minus to just about every quirk, it seems. I take hope from that!
• Joy -- a beautiful comment, Joy! Thank you for reading. I did my undergraduate degree through Tabor College and my postgrad through the University of New England. Both schools have qualities that I really love. Feel free to email or hit me up on facebook if you have any questions about either uni.

All the things we don't say:

Do you ever imagine what your life would be like if you gave voice to all the things you only think? Do you wonder what kind of person you'd be? I do. There's so much that goes unspoken in our world, and I don't even mean the deep, dark secrets of the soul that only ever get shared with one or two safe people (or a listening God). I mean the ordinary observations that run through our minds that are never sounded because they'd label us as weird or presumptuous or just too real. No one wants anyone to be too real, right? It just gets awkward.

For example: I am so unintentionally uptight about taking liberties that I will rarely use a person's nickname if I am not directly related to them or unless I have known them forever. But that doesn't stop me giving them nicknames in my mind, affectionate little titles that reflect how warmly I think of those people. What if I used those invented nicknames? Like, actually out loud? Would the sky fall?

And what if I actually, calmly and in an extremely measured fashion, told that woman at the florist the other day that she was being rude and unprofessional, and really had not earned any of the massive sum of money that we just handed over to her?

What if I told the checkout guy at Woolies that I was having a really pathetic afternoon and was feeling exhausted and fragile, and then his chirpy smile -- and 1950s hairdo and the way he laughingly watched my brother ride off through the mall on the shopping trolley -- all made things feel about 68% better?

What if I told that father that the way he treats his son is cruel, that it's bullying and there is no justification for that kind of behaviour?

What if I let the guy at the video store know that he is my favourite shop assistant there because he asks "How has your day been?" and then seems genuinely disappointed if I don't immediately go on and actually detail what's been happening? What if I told him that people don't usually care about strangers any more and that it's a remarkable thing that he does?

What if I said to the person I am only just getting to know, "I have never met anyone like you and I am intrigued by the way you experience life."?

Maybe I'll never be the kind of person who can offhandedly say these things. Maybe I won't ever use someone's nickname unless expressly requested to do so. Maybe the world isn't ready for all of us to become manic pixie dream girls.

But there are a few small ways I am trying to say the things that remain unsaid. I am trying to answer honestly when people ask, "How are you?" I am learning to be more bold in saying, "I'm sorry; I don't know what that is," when of course I'd rather sit tight and seem smart (even if it means shocking all the older women in the room because I haven't remembered who Prince George is, for goodness' sake). And I'm trying to be more confident about saying various incarnations of, "I am really glad I know you," even if I'm not certain we're 'at that level' yet. But I am really glad for the people in my life, and I want to be bolder about expressing that.

How about you? What would happen if you started speaking out the things you don't say?

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Conversations:

• Emily Dempster -- it's so much fun when someone digs out a past blog post and interacts with it. I loved your list of book that have shaped who you are! Thank you so much for sharing <3 li="">
• Asea -- how I wish I could be a fly on the wall during one of your days. Your work (and study and social) life intrigue me so much!
• Meaghan -- ha ha, I'm not brave; I'm a wimp! And my fear of heights seems to get worse as I get older. Now I'm at the point of closing my eyes when there are scenes shot from great heights in a movie, for crying out loud.

Digging deeper:

When I was considering my undergraduate degree and excitedly discussing it with whoever would listen, an older friend said to me, “They say if you want to hate literature, you should study it.” Oh.

This friend is someone I generally consider to be pretty wise, but in this case he turned out to be wrong. Here I am, almost at the end of nearly five years of study, and I love literature more than ever.

I have certainly had to read stuff I didn’t care for. I’d say about 50% of the texts set for my classes were ones I wouldn’t naturally pick up for myself, mostly because it seems that many tertiary texts highlight the bleak and the gritty. Yes, I have had to wade through postmodern criticism that desperately seeks out phallic symbols in the most unlikely of places and brings everything -- yes, everything -- back to Oedipus. I have read stories that gave far too much information and stories that gave far too little. I’ve been called upon to dig out meaning I really didn’t even think was there. I do have a few choice things to say about certain bits of convoluted postmodern literary theory but I can honestly affirm that none of it has made me hate literature. Even when I hated where a novel went, I couldn’t hate the novel itself. There is always some spark of wonder and I think that studying a piece of writing will draw that out -- for me, at least. And as for the stuff I already loved and had to revisit? Plumbing the depths of these works didn’t drain them of all joy. Rather, I got to see nuanced sides of the works that I’d never considered, delicate layers of meaning and artistry that I didn’t even know were there. Far from making me hate literature, studying it only enhanced my appreciation for it.

It’s not just books that work like this. I remember being set a very complex Bach prelude and fugue back when I was studying piano. The movement of the voices -- four of them, spread amongst two hands -- was immensely complex and interwoven, and I pretty much despaired of playing it with any fluidity. I groaned as I picked apart the work note by note, dragging and fumbling my way through. But as I gained a little proficiency (it was never wholly easy for me, let me be clear), I actually began to love it. Of course, the work did not change, but I did. I got to know it better, and in knowing it better I was more able to see its beauty. More recently, I see this happening for one of my music students. “I hate this!” she moaned, staring at a new song which included some unfamiliar techniques. “This is the worst song I’ve ever had to play!” I tried to tell her that maybe it would become her favourite; that’s how it often worked for me. She was frankly disbelieving. Two weeks later, with her fingers moving deftly over the notes, she confessed that it was now her favourite. And because she is eleven years old and entirely unselfconscious, there was no sheepishness. She just grinned widely.

I wonder if the process is the same for learning to love people? In my teens and early twenties, I craved that instant connection with new friends, the undefinable “click,” so difficult to explain but so easy to recognise when it’s present. It’s the sort of feeling that has you laughing with someone and showing them your truest self even though you’ve only known them an hour -- because something about them, or the way you and they are, together, says it’s okay, it’ll work. I used to think friendship needed those click moments, but now I’m not so sure. There are friendships in my life that started off very slowly, awkwardly, brokenly. There are people I know with whom I had to make a concerted effort to reveal parts of my heart, taking a risk and putting it out there in a clunky fashion because it was never going to happen organically. Some of these people are my dearest friends now. With some, I’m still my quietest self, my most hesitant self, but they are true friends and real friends because I have known them long enough to see the intricate layers of the notes and the melodies that criss-cross and compete but somehow come together to make something amazing.

Perhaps studying something will make you hate it. But I don’t think so. I think that if you really want to learn to love something, looking a little closer is the best way to do it.

Dear you all:

Does it seem to you that the rotation of the earth on its axis has been a little fast lately? My ears are ringing and I want to get off. Or at least, I want it to slow down so the view isn't just a blur.

It's autumn here in Queensland, has been for more than a month, but tonight is the first hint that Brisbane will embrace its fall identity. There's a cool breeze, just a little bit of a nip in the air. I'm still wearing sandals, but I have a light cardigan on, too. It could all disappear again tomorrow -- yesterday was ridiculously hot -- but at least I know that autumn is possible. Summer in Queensland tends to make me stop believing.

March was a rapid cycle of work, uni, writing deadlines, a trip to Sydney for my gnome's engagement party and bridesmaid dress shopping, more work, more uni, more writing deadlines, a family getaway to Coffs Harbour to celebrate my grandparents' combined 80th birthday parties, more work, breathing, packing and unpacking, you know it. All that stuff.

This week brings with it the school holidays, so I have two weeks off from one of my part-time jobs. My thoughts lately have been preoccupied with post-university wonderings, burdens about money (alternately hating the stuff and then pretending I don't care), feelings of missed connections, regret over not being able to fit more into my days. There are so many people who should know how much I care about them. In the midst of it all, writing a bunch of essays on children's media (it's a lot of fun) -- and then my hard drive decided to turn up toes and die. Most of my writing was backed up (I hope; I think; I am trying not to consider it too much) but goodbye to four years of photos. I am oddly empty about all of this. I don't know whether it's denial or I have somehow achieved some higher plane of acceptance thanks to some special measure of grace. We'll see what transpires.

Last weekend I got to take a ride on the Brisbane wheel. I'm not fond of heights (she said, severely understating the fact) but it's not a big ferris wheel by world standards. I was not prepared for the very marrow in my legs to twitch and shiver in complete and utter fear. There was no logic to it. I knew that the wheel was safe, I was entirely enclosed, but with all my being I wanted to make myself as minute as a flea so the tiny glass cosmos I was enclosed in would seem huge and secure. I screwed my eyes closed in an attempt to trick my body into thinking I was on the ground. It didn't work, and all I could think was "Twelve minutes of this. TWELVE MINUTES."

The weird shivering inside my legs faded a little after the second revolution. I could open my eyes a bit on the third. I could stare straight out of the window on the fourth. I could actually look to the side on the fifth. By the time the wheel slowed to a stop on the sixth cycle, I was surviving. So maybe things are never going to slow down, but perhaps eventually we acclimatise to them. And if we survive the velocity long enough, maybe there's even a really good view.