Introducing The A.B.C., and “The 12 Days of Christmas”
I’m sure you’ve heard about how my very first post was inspired by lolikitsune, so we won’t talk ill of the dead. What you probably don’t know about my blog was what or who exactly inspired it. Since the original blog has since been deleted, I’ll use a placeholder in lieu of the real thing, also because the author doesn’t really write the same stuff anymore, so linking to his current one would be rather pointless.
I started reading anime blogs somewhere around the time where the Anime Nano podcast was still alive, and jp’s was the first I started following consistently for its resemblance to what Oscar Wilde would write, if Wilde was an otaku instead of a pederast and dug films instead of poetry. I forgot which post(s) of his struck me as particularly awesome, but I remember telling myself that I would make a blog like his if I ever got around to it. Then Kanon finished airing, and I watched it over three days. Spring 2007 came, along with some of the most utterly retarded opinions about an anime that was to be judged by its OP. My anime blogging began.
I recently discovered while reading Les Miserables that Marius, Book Four, is entitled “The Friends of The ABC”, which this doesn’t happen to reference, unfortunately, but the better you know…
But you’re reading this to find out what The Anime Blogging Collective is all about, so the history lesson can wait. Higevs or Hidoshi (sorry, guys, I forgot who) suggested this name at one point, and it being a catchy name and all, it stuck. It could mean all manner of things, like Awesome Blogger Coalition, Always Blogging Cynically, AIR Being Crap, and so on. It was a brilliant pun in that your ABCs are the basics you learn as a child, a necessity that differentiates you from the illiterate. What else could be as important as community when it came to anime blogging?
For all this to make sense, however, we start at the beginning. The ABC, originally a joint blogging exercise between me and Impz, began informally through IRC messages and then Gmail as the numbers increased, before evolving into its current incarnation Google Group that we know of today. It wasn’t long before I started inviting more bloggers that I admired greatly in hopes that we could get around to blogging about things together, like all good blogospheres do.
This of course had to do with the fact that the anime blogging community sucks, at least according to current standards. What community? In Kaolla’s words, “Is it edible?” I noticed that a majority of the anime blogs out there acted like RSS never existed, pingbacks and trackbacks were non-words, and comments souped up ego boosting (or as I like to say, e-go) guestbook entries. What links? Fellow anime bloggers didn’t exist, and how could you link to a non-existence about a theoretical post he or she might have done?
Since my early days of blogging, I’ve practiced what I thought all good bloggers, not just anime ones, did in this day and age. Link to other people often, as it shows more than just your take on things. Respond, or at least read pingbacks. Highlight blogs that deserve attention. Treat your comments with reverence (and troll those who don’t) — reply to them in the hopes of sparking discussion, don’t just agree with them on how much they agree with you, but give and take if they have any other questions. Maintain an active blogroll. Do that social networking thing by regularly reading and commenting on other blogs.
My idealistic image of what blogging was all about slowly cracked and shattered, this image being fueled by A-list blogs like Scobleizer. What blogroll? If there even was one at all, the same old blogs would be listed ad nauseum. Initiatives to connect with fellow bloggers were non-existent; posts and general attitudes were of the narrow and navel-gazing variety. It wasn’t so much the fault of the blogger per se as it was the structure of anime blogging, which is where I think it all started. Two words: episode summaries.
While episode summaries by themselves are value-free, they foster an environment that isn’t exactly conducive towards community. You don’t really need a substantial opinion for an episode summary blog, you just have to write about what happened, and take a lot of screencaps. Maybe a personal footnote at the end or a short paragraph about what you thought of the episode. Not rocket science, and thus easy to perpetuate. Unfortunately, it didn’t do much for trackbacks and pingbacks.
Enter the editorial blog. According to Hinano, our beloved Answerman apparently confused them with episode summary blogs because episode summary blogs are widely read and usually don’t venture into Zac Bertschy’s asinine posts. Editorial blogs, however, have 0 comments, and since we don’t have much by way of summaries, we close in on opinions by influential anime industry people faster than a hungry lion on a young gazelle. Especially stupid, poorly-reasoned, out-of-touch, antiquated, ass-kissing ones, like those that Mr. Answerman are known to produce.
“Mr. Answerman’s column is on strike this week!” “really? and nothing of value was lost.” “wait, he’s not really on strike, just doing an about face on some of his most farcical opinions.” “…dammit.”
I digress. Having discovered that there were editorial blogs out there that subscribed to the same blogging values I held, I realised that there was an evident divide among the episode summary blogs and the editorial ones. Episode blogs are a stand-alone affair that don’t really need external linkage, social networking, or all the trappings of a conventional blog in any blogosphere. The sheer traffic obtained through it alone is usually sufficient for the blogger to not have to bother with pesky things like linking, with would entail getting to know other bloggers, reading their blogs, and so on.
Editorial blogs are the opposite. They network through sheer necessity, linking to other bloggers of similar make in hopes that the 10 or so hits they deliver to the linked blog will ensure future reciprocation, or at least a guaranteed regular reader. While they are the ones that need the most traffic, arguments about a “need” for traffic notwithstanding, they command the least by virtue of their nature; if episode summary blogs are hard and fast entertainment for the masses, then editorial blogs are anime philosophy, dealing with issues and themes that only thinking otaku would prefer. A niche within a niche.
So there was a caste system of sorts, with the two types of bloggers hardly interacting. I mentioned jpmeyer earlier because of his immense influence on how I looked at and approached anime blogging. First of all, the serious way in which he treated anime and its peripherals led me to believe that blogging about anime didn’t necessarily have to default to low art. More importantly, his method of fostering community was elementary and involved reading blogs, occasionally highlighting the deserving ones; replying to the comments he received; linking and keeping up to date with current events — it wasn’t hard to do, and struck me as the right way to go about anime blogging.
As The ABC took shape and more people began contributing, it struck me that what we were doing was fashioning a semblance of community, and connecting through artificial means since we couldn’t be arsed to do so the old-fashioned way. It’s this unspoken reason of reaching out by which we gather, and I made this post partly due to the sometimes-secretive way by which we go about things — all we really do in the Google Group is discuss about a potential joint blogging before setting a date and time, and then linking to each other when the posts are published.
With the original 2 bloggers (on retrospective, a perfect synergy of an editorial and an episode summary blog) having now snowballed to its current 34, everything seemed well and good; unfortunately, a recent deconstruction of our latest joint blogging efforts have shown to possess a bias towards abstract ideas, with the concern that we’re just not connecting with the everyday otaku who reads anime blogs. It’s been said that a good idea is one that lends for much improvisation, and it’s this latest exercise in blogging that I now present to you:
The 12 Days of Christmas, anime blogging style. Over the next 12 days from the 14th up till Christmas, a handful of us from The ABC will be going through the 12 finest moments of 2007; anime, manga, visual novels, and what have you. Unlike our previous modus operandi of simultaneous posts with the same timestamp, we’ll be doing things a little differently this time around, and posting in a less restricted, ad hoc manner on things that have tickled our fancy this year. It’s always a good thing to reflect on the past, and what better way to do it than to look back on our latest raison d’etres?
Seasonal reflection aside, our goal this time around would be to blog together about something anyone can relate to. Cried at Kanata’s backstory? Been there, done that. Gaped at the epic that was Gurren-Lagann? Old hat. Raged at the overtly-conservative TV stations censoring someone’s just deserts? You mean you didn’t? From Nice Boats to chocolate cornets to drills, there’s bound to be a moment for everyone, just like Santa’s proverbial sack of toys. If you own an anime blog and feel so inclined to join us despite not being in The ABC, feel free, by all means. Links aren’t necessary but always appreciated.
no, it’s not a trap.
All I request of you in return is that you spread the word around. Link to this post if you know of bloggers reading your blog who will be blogging throughout the season instead of puking their guts out at 4 in the AM. It’s easy to forget that we’re blogging to foster a sense of community as much as we are blogging for a community, and it’s thanks to this superb idea of CCYoshi’s that we’re going back to the basics again. Here’s to a round of great posting this holidays, and I hope to see you around.
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An interesting read. I have recently been lured into trying my hand at blogging about anime, and your stress on community is a good point. I shall consider experimenting with something like a bibliography for each entry I make. Incidentally, pederastry and being an otaku are hardly mutually exclusive . . .
Ooh, you’ve finally made the plunge. Subscribed! I take it I’ll be seeing your reflections on the 14th?
Maybe you’re thinking of ephebophilia or even paedophilia. :P I assure you that pederasty is only practised by a very small sub-set of otaku, unless my friends have skeletons in their closets that they don’t want me to know about!
I do have to say, it became a lot harder to make the sort of posts that I made for the first 6 months once school started to wind down. Contrary to the common “I have a life now so I don’t have time for silly animu”, (I have about a 75 minute commute to work each way that I can and do spend watching anime) I lost out on the kind of stimulation that I needed to make posts like that. It seemed like so many of those posts began with “So in class today we discussed film theory X which made me realize ‘Hey, that’s just like in anime Y!’” That and the fact that writing about a lot of that stuff again would just seem like rehashing old points.
It’s a good observation especially nowadays. It does seem to true that in 2007, there has been significantly less communal activity compared to 2006. A quick check of the archives would verify this.
Why? I can’t speak for the rest, but to state my own reasons:
1) I’m lazy to link. Sure, it may take just 10-30 seconds, but it involves having to actually search for either the blog or worse, the specific post to link to. Why not I just describe that post and be done with it? Like say, Jpmeyer’s old post on Haruhi episode 1 film studies parodying. Not quite as effective without a link.
2) I barely read other anime blogs and I’m sure many do not either. People just say the same things, either in big words or little words. My new favourite type of posts are event reports, where you get to learn about other countries’ anime cultures.
3) There is no longer a centralisation of the animeblogosphere, unlike the old days of maybe Blogsuki (the devil’s plaything) or even Nano. With the rapidly increasing numbers of a-blogs, the sense of a community is diluted.
Oh believe me, as a privately-educated Englishman, I know about pederasty (more as a running school joke than as a reified practice, thankfully).
Didn’t the 12 days begin on Christmas Day? Regardless, yes you may well see some reflections on the 14th.
In my case, it helps when I “feed” off a post, where I post based off of something that someone else has already said. Obviously that means an instant link to them, and I hope people decide to take a gander at where I get some inspiration from. Those blogs tend to deserve it. The ABC has helped things out a lot as well, introducing me to some blogs that I wouldn’t have thought to check out had they not been there. Of course, I think the same things applies to my blog as well, as people who don’t know I existed have less of a chance of doing so because of the ABC. :P
When I started blogging, I always thought the community was more together than it actually is, and it does seem like cliques form both directly and indirectly as a result (ABC fits into the former, even though that’s not its point). Do I feel like making the effort to expand the community? Sometimes I guess, as my blogroll has an… “eclectic” mix of blogs there (if not episode summary vs. editorial, than what the focus on). Or something like that. :P
If it wasn’t for JP’s blog would be dead. :P
Scenario:
Hinano: You get like no comments on your blog our google adsense money is going down wtf.
Jp: Yea..
Hinano: Write a post, here why don’t you write about ______
JP: What am I gonna write about it?
Hinano: BITCH STFU UP AND WRITE NOWWWWWWWWW
*JP puts his tail between his legs and writes a post.
PS. UGH THE EVIL CAPTCHA OF DOOM!
The ABC is totally helping to bring the community together, which is something that is very possible nowadays. I definitely agree with a lot of people not “believing” that a community exists, and I’ve been trying to make people realize that there are many other fun blogs out there for awhile. Ha, but I feel so out of place for being a summary writer. This team up will change the (anime blogging) world! …Hopefully anyways.
Also, LOL @ Hinano! xD
I always thought that it was unfortunate that the anime community roped itself off into a corner and separated itself from the rest of the internet. ABC is a private Google Group so how does that help out people in the community if outsiders can’t even see it?
Always looking to improve myself and having fun at the same time, which was why I joined the ABC. Really looking forward to the “12 Days of Christmas” since it would be my first participation with the group, although honestly, I still haven’t figured out all 12 moments yet.
jp: I understand where you’re coming from, noted. To be honest it’s not like I really miss those posts, but they were a great inspiration while they lasted. Now excuse me while I build a statue of you pointing to the heavens.
Hinano: The reCaptcha has the occasional retarded bug where you have to not press Enter from the Captcha, or select the Submit Comment button or something. Forgot which. It keeps out 90% of the spam, though, and Akismet takes care of the remaining 10%.
Michael: I’m afraid I don’t follow the logic. What matters here isn’t the process, it’s the result. Lest you assume we’re having the time of our lives in our private little treehouse you’re quite mistaken — all we do is brainstorm about the next topic, and then set a date to present it to the public. That’s really it. No one’s stopping anyone from applying if they have an anime blog. What benefits would come out of making the Google Group public? None.
I can imagine what would happen if it were public, though; there would be a lack of accountability, and whoever wanted to post would just do it any old how. Cross-linking (which is the entire point of the exercise) wouldn’t be able to be enforced. The whole element of surprise would be gone, thus pre-empting possible discussion that might arise. Maybe you could explain your view to me a little, because I’m afraid I’m not seeing it.
Make sure you don’t tell anyone about the ponies we give out in ABC.
To be honest I think the old hat tools like pingback and RSS are just the first iteration of an old idea materialized. These are stuff that the generation ahead of me promised me when I was just a little child. It’s the coming of the information revolution down to the masses (and not just funds rich people invested in). To give a more practical example: I don’t like pingbacks simply because things like technocrati could do a much better job monitoring who links to who else, and all pingback does is to say “hey this is like a comment but it’s NOT! But click on this link because I rock at writing microcontent!” Ugh, no thank you. I’m sure in a few years they’ll come up with a better way to organize free floating links. If I want to write my blog entry on someone elses’ comment box, I will, but even that is more preferable.
Which is to say anime fandom, for me, exists on the internet best as forums. The niche of thinking otaku is not a hidden fortress of elitism nor is it just some obnoxious dude with a loudspeaker on the sidewalk. It’s a community, just like every other community. And just as you described, the thinking otaku is usually smart enough to find where they are wanted and much better means at exchanging information with like-minded people. In fact you can even see this at big summary sites with their massive comments and the, lol, discussion that take place. Sure the Signal-to-Noise ratio is very low, but that’s still something and it’s on a consistent basis.
What I see (as a thinking otaku) with blogs is really the same thing I see with internet forums and mailing lists. What makes me blog is the freedom to do whatever I want with my blog which would be diminished at a forum or a ML. But that’s just me.
Who are these thinking otaku you are mentioned?
Love the idea, Owen. I think I’ll take part in this when I can; I don’t know if I can manage a reflection post every day from the 14th through Christmas, but at least I can get some of them out there.
I’m also interested in officially joining the ABC because of the way you described it here; is it invite only to join, or is there a way to request membership?
I admire the way this post diverts any suspicion from the ABC’s true plan- to destroy the world and remake it in our own image. Just kidding, of course- now excuse me whilst I go and sign for the new magic CCTV and villains’ chairs that the delivery men have just brought in…
(also, I hate these flags- they always seem to think I live in the US.)
@Karura: that’s the retardedness of AOL for you – I’m currently suffering from their broadband service so I’m listed as Stateside too even though I’m as English as a wet weekend (and because of AOL, almost as miserable).
@Omo: True. I don’t really like the idea of pingbacks/trackbacks either but at the moment it’s the best tool for the job open to us unfortunately. When Wordpress version X has a better alternative I’ll use it – a better idea will always turn up sooner or later.
In terms of a general community, I still feel like a newcomer to the aniblogosphere, although a year and 8 months is actually a long time in internet terms. I’d like to think that the ABC has helped, but for every blog visitor who benefits there always seems to be another who misses the point of the exercise and sees it as a closed club where we cook up stuff in that little treehouse. It’s a shame really because I’ve had a lot of editorial ideas from it – I’ve been trying to move away from the episode summary format since there are more prolific and faster bloggers doing that so much better.
The Google Group thing is really just to decide on the next topic so was never meant to be a hub or ‘inner sanctum’ type of area. Similarly there’s an archive of the older posts on my server but that is intended as a repository for reference purposes – I would have sorted the appearance out a bit but I’m currently sidetracked by a Denno Coil marathon…when that’s done I’ll make a more formal announcement and intro post for it.
I dunno, but I’ve always liked Anwserman’s column. Maybe I have low standards.
Why a caste system? That would mean one style is superior to the other, and that’s not the cause. They actually compliment quite well each other. Wrong choice of words there.
Kabitzin: Even if I do, there’s always the top-secret unicorn henshin they have to figure out.
Karura: Don’t drop my mask as you bring it in, the last time we had to get a replacement it took weeks.
sage: I was thinking in terms of sheer traffic and self-sufficiency, where summary blogs still command more traffic than editorial ones no matter what. As an example of the power of summaries, Orion of Epic Win told me he gets like a thousand on average with recent traffic peaking at 2000 while I consider 500 hits here to be an extremely good day.
Then there’s the whole “need” thing, where editorial blogs are generally more needy than summary ones when it comes to exposure. Anyone can pick up a summary to read, digesting abstract ideas or elaborate opinions (that form a lot, if not all of an editorial blog’s posts) would be a different story. At least that’s how I looked at it when I made that statement. I see where you’re coming from, though.
This felt like 5 minutes wasted on reading a plea for more shared traffic. :p
School has left me with a gaping asshole.
that is all.
It’s like the god of ping-backs decided to smote you.