"The report of my blog's death was an exaggeration."

A rework of Mark Twain's letter (by Tarek Chemaly)

Well, here we are - blogs come and go. Lebanese Blogs is now defunkt because - and to quote Hemingway (about bankruptcy), the readership went down in two ways "Gradually, then suddenly" prompting Mustafa to pull the plug. Many other bloggers either grew bored, tired, or migrated to instagram and became "influencers". At this stage one can count the bloggers holding the fort on the fingers of the hand of a Yakuza member. The Social Media Awards came and went with what I think was an orphan (risible) edition.

And still, I migrated to a new URL, I learned that at this stage one does not attract readers anymore but goes to them - so to them I went through soial media channels.

Every once in a while a post of mine goes viral, but mainly the same old audience that used to come to me still comes to me now that I make it a point to go to them. Some of my students follow me somewhere, somehow - be it linkedin, or twitter or facebook, which I update daily with my post, but with the youth being more Instagram friendly they tend to rather discover me there (my instagram content rarely intersects with the blog however).

But there's the thing - some people always tell me that my blog is "dead" or "dying" or "will die" or any variant of the verb "to die" in past/present/future. Nevermind the tens of thousands of readers monthly, the million and a half since its inception in January 2007 (do the math about its age!), nevermind I am the only blogger among the jurors of Epica Awards so much a new rule in judging was issued after I joined (that extremely high grades and low grades were encouraged as I either butchered ads or thought they were exceptional when other jurors where going ho hum in their grades), nevermind all this and that - no, my blog is dead/dying/will die.

Surely blogging in general has seen better days (I said so a while ago), and blogging - in the case of Lebanon (at least when you are not ass-kissing) tends to ruffle feathers (read here). And yes, some people dislike me intensely - this I concede to. But then again, people with no principles do not understand what makes a man with principles act.

I was told, a couple of years after I moved from engineering/economics to advertising by a member of the top brass that I was not made for advertising and it would be better to go back to my previous career. I did not listen, probably because I saw "advertising" not as a let's-steal-this-ad-pretend-we-came-up-with-it-ourselves but more like a creative hub which also, on the side, serves as a betterment for society.

It is a little bit funny, the more someone thinks they can push me to a corner the more I stick to my guns. Here's a bad news to all those who bet on my blog's death: I - and the blog - are still around. And in what is actually is a tweak on Mark Twain's funny letter dated May 31, 1897 - here's a newsflash:

"The report of my blog's death was an exaggeration."