XV | Tragic Comedy

Scott Hardie | July 17, 2016
Tragic Comedy turned 15 this weekend. Originally a simple blog for me, it started as a joke (I was making fun of the then-fad of people making weblogs), then it grew into something more as friends started commenting, and the comments became discussions, and I started letting anybody start these discussions. The site reached its peak traffic around the time of the 2004 presidential election, when hundreds of comments were being posted daily. Since then, we added blogs for individual authors, but we've also gone down in participation significantly since the 2004 peak:

2001-2002: 1113 comments, 0 posts, 0 replies, 1113 total
2002-2003: 1032 comments, 0 posts, 0 replies, 1032 total
2003-2004: 3954 comments, 0 posts, 0 replies, 3954 total
2004-2005: 10967 comments, 0 posts, 0 replies, 10967 total
2005-2006: 2898 comments, 0 posts, 0 replies, 2898 total
2006-2007: 2631 comments, 320 posts, 805 replies, 3756 total
2007-2008: 4240 comments, 402 posts, 940 replies, 5582 total
2008-2009: 2359 comments, 159 posts, 548 replies, 3066 total
2009-2010: 1476 comments, 150 posts, 622 replies, 2248 total
2010-2011: 1593 comments, 70 posts, 242 replies, 1905 total
2011-2012: 1547 comments, 46 posts, 112 replies, 1705 total
2012-2013: 770 comments, 35 posts, 28 replies, 833 total
2013-2014: 408 comments, 13 posts, 26 replies, 447 total
2014-2015: 670 comments, 22 posts, 26 replies, 718 total
2015-2016: 737 comments, 12 posts, 30 replies, 779 total

But I think that decline is normal for a discussion forum like this that's still around in 2016. Facebook devastated sites like ours. The blogging fad lasted longer than I thought it would, but it eventually got eaten up by social media, and the journal/forum sites that still around are all seeing drastically reduced participation. In the age of Periscope and Twitter, the kind of long-form written communicating that we're doing here feels almost as antiquated as writing a letter by hand and putting it in a mailbox.

And yet, I still get a lot out of TC, even as recently as this weekend. I laugh, I rant, I mourn, I learn, I share, and I grow as a person. I'm tremendously grateful for the experiences and connections that TC has enabled. And I'm glad for everyone who's been here talking, present and past. I have no idea how many years we have left, but I look forward to continuing the conversation.

Erik Bates | July 22, 2016
[hidden by request]

Steve West | July 23, 2016
My blog contributions have decreased as the girls grow older giving less cutesy stuff to post about but they're still happening and I should return to posting about them.

Scott Hardie | August 7, 2016
I am glad to have you both, and everyone else on here. :-)

I used to fret about not posting every day and keeping TC going. But I just can't participate daily. My work schedule is too demanding and what free time I get is mostly spent on Kelly and friends. A burst of new TC content every week or two is the best that I can do. Obviously I opened the floodgates this weekend, so I hope you're enjoying the deluge. :-P