It's The End Of The World As We Know It

Amongst the deluge of social media offerings of late, a small quack filled the airwaves for but a brief moment, a few weeks ago.  While some say that the death of the medical blogosphere is greatly exaggerated, others lament the dearth of new and unique voices filling the vacuum.  Indeed so many good writers have come and gone.   Are we becoming extinct, or is this a short lived blip, a hiccup?  Does anyone really care about creating content anymore, or are we just a lousy group of aggregators prone to navel gazing and self promotion?

And more importantly, does it matter?  Anyone who has written publicly (for free) for long enough knows that we create content not for our readers, but for ourselves.  We write to fill an insatiable need that burns in our bellies and burst into flames marking the computer screen with the irascible contents of our insides.  Otherwise, it's just too hard,  Putting pen to paper, day after day, week after week, can not be done for someone else.  We are egoists, often aware of our audience in only the most oblique ways.  

We come and we go.  We write when the emotional energy is present and disappear when the drain of real life sucks us away from our own self reflection.  Our voices become quiet and humble, but they do not disappear.  And they return.  Maybe once again on a blog, or in an op ed piece in a newspaper, or in a less verbose microblogging platform.  

The question of the medical blogosphere, my friends, is quite irrelevant.  The drum of human creativity yearns to be heard.  Where and when, however, is much more an issue for the audience.  If you want to continue to hear the daily smattering of self involved creativity,

you might just have to intuit which way to roll the dial.