6.27.2018

Support Your Favorite Atheist Bloggers

support your favorite atheist blogger

No, this is not one of those pleas for Patreon money you are probably all-too used to seeing on some atheist blogs. I don't have any problem with bloggers using that model, but that isn't what this is. In this post, I'd like to suggest an easy and completely free way for all of us to support our favorite atheist bloggers in a way that might not always occur to us: visit their blogs and leave a comment.

Even if atheist blogging hasn't peaked as I suspect it probably has, I have noticed a drop-off in the number of comments over the years. And it isn't just here at Atheist Revolution that I've noticed it. From what I can tell, most people who have something to say are doing so on social media rather than in the blogs' comments sections. I don't blame them, and I've certainly done this too. If social media is where they are first encountering the content, it makes sense that they'd do this. But I still think that it is a good idea to visit the blogs one reads and contribute to the comments there.

Contributing to the on-blog comments shows the blogger that you've visited (rather than just reacting to the title of the post). It also makes it far easier for the blogger and other readers of the blog to interact with your comment and get to know you. You might even become a member of a community of sorts. Commenting on the blog also gives your comment a much larger potential audience. I can't tell you the number of times someone has left a fantastic comment on my Facebook page and I've found myself wishing it had been left in the comments on the blog where more people would see it and have the opportunity to interact with it. As hard as it might be for some to believe, I am certain that I have readers who refuse to use Facebook for all sorts of good reasons.

At least for me, one of the benefits of on-blog comments is that I am far more likely to see them. I rarely have time to bounce back-and-forth between Facebook, Twitter, Minds, etc. to track what everyone is saying and respond to the comments. Despite my best efforts, I miss many of them. On the other hand, I can usually manage to visit my own blog at least a few times a week. I may not always have time to provide thoughtful responses to every comment that deserves one, but I come much closer. And of course, other readers often do so too.

This post was inspired by my visit to one of the many atheist blogs I read regularly. The post I was reading had a ton of social media shares but 0 comments. I thought that was a shame, so I left a comment. As I was writing it, I found myself thinking that it was so much easier to share the post on social media (which I did) than to take the time to write a thoughtful comment on the blog. But I wanted to write a comment because I wanted the blogger to know that I had been there and appreciated her work. I think that most bloggers appreciate that sort of thing. And like I said, it is easy and free.