An Imagined Dialogue Where I Meet You, the Reader
Who are you?
My name is Brian Puckett. I have been doing historical fencing since 2016.
What is this? A blog? Lol. Idiot.
Big 2008 energy. I know all the cool kids have moved on to TikTok and Insta.
Why?
By 2020, I accumulated a Facebook friend list of about 700 people, most of whom I didn’t know. In the summer of 2020, I realized this was not good for me and decided to prune back the list for my own mental health. Nothing against anyone I cut (mostly) - but my dopamines had gotten all out of whack, y’all.
At the time, a handful of people reached out to say they wanted to keep track of my thoughts on fencing, history, etc. I said I would think of something and have not followed through on that. This is partly an attempt to do so.
Yeah, but why a blog?
I’ve thought about trying to make videos for things, and I mostly don’t like it. It’s great for certain kinds of content, but it requires a huge amount of work that does not relate to things that interest me. The ratio of work to the satisfaction I get from the product usually doesn’t feel right to me. Writing is something that comes easily to me, though.
I also want something that allows for posting long-format content. I don’t have a particular hard-on for bloviating, and it irks me when a long piece of writing does not have enough content to justify its own length. That being said I do think it is sometimes easier to probe the nuances of a topic if we devote focused attention to it.
I know long-format content has tension with trying to “grow an audience” in a world that prefers bite-size content. That’s fine. I’m not trying to.
Alright, what am I in for if I follow this blog of yours?
Posts about historical fencing, surely, but also posts about the history of the period I’m interested in, which is mostly the 14th and 15th centuries.
One thing I would like to do is write reviews of history books that the historical fencing community might enjoy. I feel like people tend to recycle the same lists of books, and not many of them are actually history books from which we can learn something that may help us understand historical fencing sources.
Another thing I have realized is that I find it helpful to “process” thoughts about fencing in the form of interpretive essays. This type of content doesn’t really work on Facebook and only marginally works on a forum like Reddit.
And you’re publicizing all this on Facebook, which you said you didn’t like. Mmkay.
I personally don't care for it, no, but for better or worse, this is where a lot of the historical fencing community seeks its online interaction. I will probably use a Facebook page to point to blog posts, and talk to people there since that’s where people tend to comment.
As for why I want to meet people where they are (i.e. Facebook):
I’m starting this in March 2021, about a year after the COVID-19 lockdowns all started, depriving most of us of the community of fencers we fence with and see at events. The extended period of isolation has prompted me to think about how sub-communities form within the community, based on shared goals and interests. Whatever someone’s goals are, nobody can "convince" someone who is not interested in something that they “should” be interested.
That’s not how this works. Nothing in this hobby matters if you zoom out far enough. We do it for fun, so people just do what they find fun.
What we can instead do is be clear about our goals and find ways to make it easier for like-minded people to find each other so you can have fun together.
That’s what is motivating this little project. I’m not trying to grow an audience, but I am trying to help people who share my interests find me so we can have fun. There are people who share my goals but think I’m a shithead and do all of this badly, and that’s fine, they don’t have to follow it.
I don’t expect to swamp people with posts, but I think historical fencing is fun, and I like thinking and talking about history. If you do too, maybe give the page a Follow and we’ll see where it takes us.
Comments
Post a Comment