I’m going through a snark crisis.

Chutney is an old blogger. I remember the old days, back when me and Philocrites were the only UU bloggers either of us knew about. Then we (and by “we,” I mean Philocrites) stumbled on a few more blogs, back when Peacebang and Boy in the Bands were getting started up. (And didn’t you guys know each other from offline?) We were a tiny lot there at first.

Then there were more and more, and the conversation blossomed. Cross posts and long comment threads. Commenters started to take on their own blogs, folks like Chalicechick and Jeff Wilson. Most of us wrote under pen names then, our real names only known to other bloggers, and then only after a history of cross blog commenting.

Then more and more blogs. It was great! At one point, I’d talked half of my covenant group into blogging. It seemed like everyone was blogging.

And the best part was the snark. Oh, we were a snarky bunch back then. Lots of back and forth. We could really mix it up. A lot of ribbing, an occasional bar fight, but no one was worse for the wear. (Or at least not from where I sat.)

Now we’re such a civilized bunch. So much more polite. Quick to reconcile. I think some of it had to do with a lot of us old timers coming out of the blog closet; it’s hard to play at the masquerade when you don’t have your mask on. Or when everyone knows who you are anyway. Seems like almost none of the new blogs use a pen name. Not like the good ole days.

Sigh. Who knew there could be such a thing as blog nostalgia? Remember when. Don’t get me wrong, it’s all very nice now…nice.

But nice doesn’t make for a good night at the pub. I like some good back and forth. The exchange of off color jabs and witty sarcasm.

And I miss the satire I used to write. I wrote a lot of it back in the day. Or tried to anyway. Got a lot of gadflying in. Didn’t feel the need to be so damn polite, so damn sincere. Felt like people appreciated it too. Felt like we all got a kick out of saying things we thought we weren’t allowed to say, and were better for it. Felt like the movement was better for it too.

I suppose you could say that the UU blogosphere has matured, and I suppose that it has. But what if we’ve just grown old? Maybe I just miss the Old West days of the UU blogosphere. It’s probably good now that Main Street is paved and the schoolhouse built, but I miss it all the same.

Maybe I’m just exhausted. One fight in particular really took it out of me. Scared me to death, really. I don’t regret how I handled it, but I do regret it, wish it wouldn’t have happened.

That one forced me out of the blogging closet. Or, well, it’s a large part of why I came out—as a blogger and someone with a mental illness—so I could be in charge of how that information was revealed and handled. I’m wasn’t the only one who was in a situation like that. Seems like there were several dark weeks there, all around. I’m hesitant to even bring it up. But I feel like a lot of us closed ourselves off after then. I don’t know what else anyone would/could do differently now, after all that, but it makes me sad all the same.

There’s also the worry that things I’ve posted will be used against me. Looking back over the past six years, I can only think of two or three posts that I feel are out of line, and I’ve blocked them. My blogging is an open secret at my congregation—if it’s a secret at all—and I’ve only received positive responses. I’m not worried about that.

In the past year, though, I’ve seen words online used wrongly to malign friends’ characters. What if someone were to take things I’ve written out of context too? Or, more likely, out of character?

There was a day when I could honestly say that Chutney is a character I write, direct and play. I still want that to be true, yet it feels different since I’ve come out of the blogging closet. It feels like I need to be less satirical, less sarcastic, less snarky, less angry. Less like Chutney and more like myself. I’m myself all the rest of the time. I don’t need to be myself here. I’m myself over here.

It also feels like I’m more analyzed now, that people assume more now that they know who I am by what I write. Chutney was always an exaggerated version of myself. He was me playing myself. A self-caricature, with some other impressions thrown in now and then for good measure. Where I was angry, Chutney was furious. Stephen Colbert as Stephen Colbert. I consciously modeled myself on this blog, doing a one man show to his ensemble piece. But, then, Phil moderated himself too when he came out of the closet.

Sigh. Don’t know where else to go with this. That’s enough nostalgia tonight from an old blogger.