This blog is asleep.
It’s not quite dead, but it’s definitely not awake. Nobody actively checks a blog with three posts in the last year. If you are here, reading this, you were most likely told by someone that this exists or you actively work/volunteer at KSPC and saw it on the website. I don’t blame you. The last time this blog was awake was the summer of 2020, where 13(!) posts went up in the span of three months. Who knows when the next post after this will be. Maybe next week. Maybe never.
I don’t mean to write this as if I am helping that cause and others are not. I am most definitely not. A blog is not typically where a 12k word diary about 6ix9ine goes. Those who are helping are KSPC volunteers Amanda Gomez and Elle Roc, who posted a concert review two weeks ago. That’s not to say that this space couldn’t be one for my type of content, just that it does not subsist on it. This blog subsisted on unique semi-weekly serialized content from a few semi-dedicated writers who targeted their content at a different audience than the regular readers of TSL. It’s the same reason that I don’t actively write for TSL, it’s that desire to talk to people who are already interested in the things that I am.
Those writers and their respective audiences left. They had to, given the automatic four year turnover that is attached to a college organization. That part isn’t surprising to me. What is surprising is that new writers didn’t filter in. Look at this sad graph counting monthly articles for the last 10 years:
There was a point at which someone would reasonably be able to check the blog every now and then and not be disappointed, but nobody is checking it regularly after the 2018 fall semester. There’s no reason to. When entering or leaving college, most writers have bigger things to worry
about than the KSPC blog; I’d bet that some of the old KSPC blog writers that don’t check the site anymore would assume that the blog is still running as usual, unaware that their presence was what kept it alive. I’d also bet that most first year KSPC volunteers have little to no idea that KSPC even has a blog. The nonstop churning of the four year college cycle allows for these quiet shifts to happen without anyone really noticing them.
Even if I did make serialized, scheduled content for the blog, at a certain point it just doesn’t feel worth it to keep shouting into the void with no response. It’s a negative feedback loop between writers and audiences, one that cannot be reversed alone. Smaller, more conversational pieces only appeal to me when there is some resemblance of a conversation, and there just isn’t one right now. There aren’t any paid positions for writers, and with a non-existent audience there is practically no outside motivation to write. At the current rate, the blog will die a pitiful, silent death like many other internet relics of the shift from self made websites to formatted platforms. It’s about as private as a personal diary or journal, but even those will always have at least one devoted reader. There aren’t any KSPC events devoted to the blog either, with all information on it coming from accidentally scrolling down too far. In the physical station, there isn’t a single thing that would hint at the existence of the blog.
I’m telling Maya, the social media director, to not post this to instagram or to tell any other KSPC employees; if anyone outside of the KSPC organization is reading this, you have overly-optimistic eyes not for what the blog is, but what it could have been. You saw this place as a destination in and of itself, imagining the same things I’ve given up on materializing. It feels off to be nostalgic for a present that isn’t happening, with a missing audience on a missing email list checking out the missing articles published in 2023. This place in its current state exists for those missing conversations, a place for topics with no immediate urgency or audience, just a vague sense that *someone* should read this.
I find a little bit of comfort in the death of a small personal obligation, but with that dies the slightly different person that I would have been had that obligation lived. To that point, I’d like to ask any current KSPC volunteers to imagine themselves occasionally putting their thoughts on music or KSPC or whatever on this blog, giving those thoughts the small but dedicated audience they may or may not deserve. If that image of yourself appeals to you, I urge you to add to this blog. There are so many talented people volunteering here, all with their own unique perspective on what KSPC should exist for. This blog does not have the same limitations of thought that something like TSL has, where there is a predefined purpose on what an article is supposed to do or how long it is supposed to be. You can put literally anything on the blog that you want (like, for example, a 12,000 word piece dedicated to 6ix9ine of all people), with the only restriction being the ethics behind KSPC’s mission statement. Your perspective is a lot more valuable than you think, especially considering how few of them exist on the blog right now.
I am only one person, and I cannot speak for KSPC on what the blog should be. However, I think it is pretty easy to agree that the organization would be worse off without it. To beg the question, what do you want the KSPC blog to be?