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| Me in the early blogging 2000s. |
T he thought entered my mind how, as far as I am aware, none of the gay Atlanta bloggers from the early 2000s, besides myself, are still around. As I have been republishing my twenty-year archive that was offline for some time, I have been thinking about that time and that group of online writers.
My old site twenty years ago was called My Daily Education or MDE for short. My slogan was "uncovering queer Atlanta." I used the word "queer" because it seemed edgy then, but now it has been adopted into the mainstream and I cringe at its usage. I wrote about nightlife mostly, wild nights, music, film, protests, travel, strange characters from local gay history, I awarded the best and worst of the city in gay terms, Atlanta and whatever else I wanted. I still write what I want, but my focus has changed with the times and my interests. The wild nights ended a long time ago, but the writing continued and diversified.
I suppose this makes me the old guard of gay Atlanta bloggers.
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| At The Masquerade in the glory days of blogging. Taken from my old site, My Daily Education. Photo by me. |
There were several of us in our twenties and thirties writing fearless and whatever we wanted. We pounded the keys and pounded our way through the clubs such as Jungle, Heretic, Blake's, WETbar and other places. Legendary Backstreet was still around, but it was being killed by the city about that time to make way for a shiny and soulless condo tower. We would chat, drink, dance, sometimes flirt or gossip, but mostly enjoy ourselves like a small cadre. We were the upstarts against the established gay media that sugar coated everything. Then they tried to co-opt some of us, including me, to write for them. I did do that interview that said something about how blogging would die and we would move to something else, which turned out to be true. I also did do some writing for the gay media so I suppose they got to me.
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| A screenshot of that interview in the 2000s. I do believe I would not have considered myself fabulous nor do I ever recall using that word. |
Where did my fellow gay Atlanta bloggers go? Our little underworld of writing we enjoyed went poof! Social media was never able to capture the spirit of blogging and aided in making people's attention spans shorter. Also, Twitter and Facebook made people more snarky and turned them into meme speakers which requires no original thought or even words.
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| One of the banners from my old site in the 2000s. |
Social media killed blogging and I am not writing much about Atlanta anymore or even living in the city, but those were good times on the internet. I cannot even remember all of their names, though I wish that I could.
Not only did blogging die, but look at the pathetic state of gay media in Atlanta today. I am not certain local gay media serves a necessary function anymore.
Underworld, Sola Sistim
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