The Rise and Fall of Audioblogging

September 1, 2004 9:01 AM

I demand four minutes and twenty seconds of your life. [via ni.vu ni.connu]
posted by lagado (24 comments total)

forward-slash, forward-slash, forward-slash, forward-slash ...

aaaauuuggghh!! okay! you've made your point! make it stop!
posted by whatnot at 9:11 AM on September 1, 2004

... forward-slash, forward-slash ...

Yeah, Maciej pretty much destroyed audio-blogging before he even got to the crux of his argument. I actually laughed out loud when he started with all those slashes.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 9:14 AM on September 1, 2004

Here's the transcription.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 9:16 AM on September 1, 2004

I'm really glad that audioblogging will never catch on.
posted by reklaw at 9:21 AM on September 1, 2004

So stop the ridiculous self indulgence, and shut up and write.

With that one sentence, he would've needed only five seconds of my life.
posted by Smart Dalek at 9:24 AM on September 1, 2004

Just because you're going to be able to do a real-time three dimensional high-definition interactive virtual reality fly-through of the inside of your cat -- does that mean you should?

HA!

(Although that might be kinda cool, actually.)
posted by papercake at 9:30 AM on September 1, 2004

Some audioblogging is good, some is lame. Rather than saying that all audioblogging is lame, let people do what they want to do and the good will rise above the bad. Audioblogging doesn't necessarily have to be a person reading their written work. It is possible for people to be creative and go in new directions with audio where written word would have never been able to go. This kind of blanket condemnation of a form of communication is ridiculous.
posted by crazy finger at 9:47 AM on September 1, 2004

I should disclose that I, at times, have been known to audioblog - oftentimes on Friday afternoons from the highway as I'm driving away from my computer.
posted by crazy finger at 9:57 AM on September 1, 2004

This guy sounds like a total wuss.
posted by xmutex at 10:10 AM on September 1, 2004

xmutex - I concur - very much a total wuss.
posted by crazy finger at 10:29 AM on September 1, 2004

Also, seems to me like a connection between his timing and some of the less wholesome aspects of his life - 4 minutes and 20 seconds? 4:20?

Think about the children.
posted by crazy finger at 10:32 AM on September 1, 2004

Been there, done that.
posted by gsh at 10:34 AM on September 1, 2004

The occasional individual post aside, I have yet to find an audioblog I'd have any real interest in following on even an intermittent basis. I believe they exist, but I've not seen an interesting one yet.

And I even keep one myself (well, it's mostly music, but still).
posted by chicobangs at 10:44 AM on September 1, 2004

Is it just me, or does he sound like a self-hypnosis tape?
posted by uncleozzy at 10:54 AM on September 1, 2004

It does.
posted by abcde at 11:02 AM on September 1, 2004

I have no sound right now. Is there a transcript? (Thus driving home further why audioblogging doesn't work.)
posted by brownpau at 11:10 AM on September 1, 2004

So stop the ridiculous self indulgence

Oh, it's too easy.
posted by solistrato at 11:26 AM on September 1, 2004

If audioblogging ever actually used the medium for something other than the verbal equivalent of a e/n blog it might be vaugely interesting. Something akin to the photoblog, where there's a particular value-add to having it in a particular format would be Very Nice, I think: NPR is filled with such content and plenty of folks listen to that to the point of supporting it.

A compendium stream of audblogs run together and edited would make a good program, if anyone could find enough unboring content to string together. People are much more receptive to uninturrupted blocks of noise than little squirts of it.
posted by Ogre Lawless at 11:53 AM on September 1, 2004

Things I'd Like Audioblog to Mean:

* Some guy reading snippets of his short stories say, or in the case of shorter works the whole things. Think of how awesome david sedaris is when he's reading his stories.

* Weblogs are often bits of found links, interesting stuff on the web. They're links because the format of the blog is html. An audioblog could be some guy who made a big mp3 (or several smaller ones) of weird *audio* stuff he found of the web. I used to do this with jazz stuff. Not jazz music, but jazz-related things. Like there used to be this great animated guide to Giant Steps. Or, I posted a movie of Django playing guitar once (incredible). Etc.
posted by RustyBrooks at 12:32 PM on September 1, 2004

I'd like to see how hyperlinking could be incorporated into audio. That would remove a lot of the silliness from this example. In fact, is someone already doing this? How hard is it to have a new window with a certain URL launched if the mouse is pressed during a given word (span of audio time)? Then again, how do you cue that the word is a link? And following up on RustyBrooks, what if it was non-verbal, and clicking during a particular portion of music took you to some music that was related, but tangential, whereas clicking within the same snippet 10 seconds later would go to something else on another tangent? That would be cool.

brownpau, you did scroll up after posting that, right?
posted by soyjoy at 1:28 PM on September 1, 2004

I admit to being entertained by Tom Green's audioblogging. For some reason, I find it funny when he tells people that he is "talking to his website".
posted by jonah at 2:10 PM on September 1, 2004

I believe RealPlayer can do something a bit like hyperlinking in audio. It's crap, though.
posted by reklaw at 2:33 PM on September 1, 2004

there are plenty of cool audio blogs out there. though i tend to like audio blogs that have nothing to do with something that could more easily be read. some good ones i can think of right away are audible frequency, greasy skillet, and quiet american's one minute vacations.
posted by alicila at 3:34 PM on September 1, 2004

What is that...a lungfish?
posted by jaronson at 9:53 PM on September 11, 2004