KD^3C^3 - 20250216 Jump up from the floor and go!
I write a newsletter, not a blog. An I think the distinction is small but meaningful.
I saw a blogpost (Are we calling them bloasts now?)about why people blog. It starts with a potentially uncomfortable proposition (stated as truth, but without evidence) that nobody reads your blog. The author then goes on to try to justify that blogging has a purpose beyond developing an audience, and I think that is an important point to consider. Blogging is about the act of creation just as much, perhaps even more than the process of it being written. Blogging can serve as a record (the root of the word is web log after all,) and your audience doesn't have to be large to be impacted by your work, and most importantly the practice of writing has value in itself. I have written (here? or in my personal space?) that i write as a way to think. Putting words down makes them concrete and able to be understood, by me just as much as everybody else. If I'm struggling with a topic writing about it can help me clarify what I really think about it.
But. I don't write a blog. I write a newsletter. Sure it's fully accessible online, and I'm sure someone reads it there, but the intended audience is a very specific and self curated group of people. People who have said "I want to read the things you write." Back when RSS was at the peak of its popularity, people used RSS feed readers to collect their favorite blogs together and have the posts delivered to a centralized location. But the thing about RSS is that it's not immediately obvious how many people have subscribed to your feed, or who they are. [Pedantic note: there are ways to approximate this information, because stats are important, particularly to potential advertisers (not something I'm worrying about) but even then there's a shared consensus reality, based on shared assumptions, not actually one that reflects the state on the other end of the feed. Podcasts are still driven mostly by RSS and it's very important that your favorite podcast knows approximately how many people are downloading every new episode.]
When I hit send on this newsletter, I know exactly how many people it is being sent to. And I know their email addresses, even! I don't collect more information than that. I don't have tracking pixels embedded in the email to check open rate. Or at least I don't think I do. It's possible the platform I use is putting them in, but I have never seen stats on the open rate since switching from tinyletter.
A newsletter is directed, it has an intended audience. A blog is a broadcast, there for anyone to pick up if they happen along. Neither is bad, but I like the one I have chosen. And not only that, I actually know the majority of people who subscribe to the newsletter. It's not a large audience, and if I looked at the subscriber list (not a thing I often do) I recognize most of the email addresses. This is not a project of extended growth. You can always forward it to a friend, but I'm not really trying to extend my reach. I would rather just let some people know what I'm thinking about on a regular basis.
I'm thinking about Muppets take Manhattan. I think what keeps Muppets Take Manhattan from being a top tier muppet movie is that it spends a significant portion of the film sidelining many of the Muppet characters.
The Muppets work best as an ensemble, and they work best bouncing off each other. The Muppet Movie is about getting the gang together, so over the course of the movie we increase the size of the ensemble up to the finale. MtM has the Muppets all together at the start, then uses a very flimsy excuse to break them up and Kermit becomes the sole protagonist for much of the movie. This is then further complicated by giving him amnesia, so we don’t even have a Kermit at the center of the film.
So much of the film feels like we the audience are waiting for things to happen. Which is funny because there are lots of things happening, but in a sort of "When are they going to get to the fireworks factory" sort of way. The Muppet Movie, again in contrast, is all rising action. The Muppet Movie starts with the ending. We see the entire ensemble sitting down to watch the movie we are about to watch, and it's explained that this is more or less the story of how the Muppets came to be. We know where we're going and every step on that journey is one of progress. Whereas in Muppets Take Manhattan we are told that the muppets are headed to New York to try and break into the Broadway with their new musical, but they are sidelined almost immediately. The Original show falls though, and because they feel like a burden, most of the troupe leaves Kermit to be by himself. Kermit then gets a job at a diner before hitting his head, losing his memory and becomes an ad man/frog. Only in the climax of the movie do the rest of the Muppets return and the initial premise of them going to Broadway is actually followed through on. It feels like the writers came up with a premise, then wandered in the desert of non-propulsive story for an hour or so, then finally did the premise they initially thought of.
This isn’t to say there aren’t good points, a lot of the work with Rizzo, the rats and the diner are fun, but If I'm going to watch a Muppet movie I want to see all the Muppets being Muppets together.
I saw a blogpost (Are we calling them bloasts now?)about why people blog. It starts with a potentially uncomfortable proposition (stated as truth, but without evidence) that nobody reads your blog. The author then goes on to try to justify that blogging has a purpose beyond developing an audience, and I think that is an important point to consider. Blogging is about the act of creation just as much, perhaps even more than the process of it being written. Blogging can serve as a record (the root of the word is web log after all,) and your audience doesn't have to be large to be impacted by your work, and most importantly the practice of writing has value in itself. I have written (here? or in my personal space?) that i write as a way to think. Putting words down makes them concrete and able to be understood, by me just as much as everybody else. If I'm struggling with a topic writing about it can help me clarify what I really think about it.
But. I don't write a blog. I write a newsletter. Sure it's fully accessible online, and I'm sure someone reads it there, but the intended audience is a very specific and self curated group of people. People who have said "I want to read the things you write." Back when RSS was at the peak of its popularity, people used RSS feed readers to collect their favorite blogs together and have the posts delivered to a centralized location. But the thing about RSS is that it's not immediately obvious how many people have subscribed to your feed, or who they are. [Pedantic note: there are ways to approximate this information, because stats are important, particularly to potential advertisers (not something I'm worrying about) but even then there's a shared consensus reality, based on shared assumptions, not actually one that reflects the state on the other end of the feed. Podcasts are still driven mostly by RSS and it's very important that your favorite podcast knows approximately how many people are downloading every new episode.]
When I hit send on this newsletter, I know exactly how many people it is being sent to. And I know their email addresses, even! I don't collect more information than that. I don't have tracking pixels embedded in the email to check open rate. Or at least I don't think I do. It's possible the platform I use is putting them in, but I have never seen stats on the open rate since switching from tinyletter.
A newsletter is directed, it has an intended audience. A blog is a broadcast, there for anyone to pick up if they happen along. Neither is bad, but I like the one I have chosen. And not only that, I actually know the majority of people who subscribe to the newsletter. It's not a large audience, and if I looked at the subscriber list (not a thing I often do) I recognize most of the email addresses. This is not a project of extended growth. You can always forward it to a friend, but I'm not really trying to extend my reach. I would rather just let some people know what I'm thinking about on a regular basis.
I'm thinking about Muppets take Manhattan. I think what keeps Muppets Take Manhattan from being a top tier muppet movie is that it spends a significant portion of the film sidelining many of the Muppet characters.
The Muppets work best as an ensemble, and they work best bouncing off each other. The Muppet Movie is about getting the gang together, so over the course of the movie we increase the size of the ensemble up to the finale. MtM has the Muppets all together at the start, then uses a very flimsy excuse to break them up and Kermit becomes the sole protagonist for much of the movie. This is then further complicated by giving him amnesia, so we don’t even have a Kermit at the center of the film.
So much of the film feels like we the audience are waiting for things to happen. Which is funny because there are lots of things happening, but in a sort of "When are they going to get to the fireworks factory" sort of way. The Muppet Movie, again in contrast, is all rising action. The Muppet Movie starts with the ending. We see the entire ensemble sitting down to watch the movie we are about to watch, and it's explained that this is more or less the story of how the Muppets came to be. We know where we're going and every step on that journey is one of progress. Whereas in Muppets Take Manhattan we are told that the muppets are headed to New York to try and break into the Broadway with their new musical, but they are sidelined almost immediately. The Original show falls though, and because they feel like a burden, most of the troupe leaves Kermit to be by himself. Kermit then gets a job at a diner before hitting his head, losing his memory and becomes an ad man/frog. Only in the climax of the movie do the rest of the Muppets return and the initial premise of them going to Broadway is actually followed through on. It feels like the writers came up with a premise, then wandered in the desert of non-propulsive story for an hour or so, then finally did the premise they initially thought of.
This isn’t to say there aren’t good points, a lot of the work with Rizzo, the rats and the diner are fun, but If I'm going to watch a Muppet movie I want to see all the Muppets being Muppets together.