Blogchain

A string of short, ad-hoc posts in a blog that together build on a theme.

I came across the idea of blogchains on Tom Critchlow's blog I believe. The word is from Venkatesh Rao, and the very tl;dr is that it's a string of short, ad-hoc blog posts that build on a theme. That's cool, and tied in with a wiki is kind of how I see me builing up ideas over time.

But where the idea gets really interesting (for me) is when it extends to cross-site blogchains and open blogchains. These are more open-ended, involving two or more people conversing and building on a theme, simply by posting to their blog about it and linking the posts together. Kind of a webring, but for posts rather than sites.

There's definitely something to be said for the long-form, turn-based conversation. One of the best conversations I have had recently was a long email chain. And some of the thoughts that have stuck with me the most are ones I've written as a long reply to someone else's open question or musings on a topic.

1. Slouching towards mediocrity and allowing myself the freedom of short-ish posts. Venkatesh aims for 300 words. Seems like a good number.

2. Infinite, open-ended world building.

https://tomcritchlow.com/2019/07/17/blogchains/

A blogchain is longform by other means. Containerized longform if you like. A themed blog-within-a-blog, built as a series of short, ideally fixed-length posts (we’re trying to standardize on 300 words as one container size).

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2019/03/21/constructions-in-magical-thinking/