Requiem for HorrorBlips

For me, a little morsel of joy went out of the blogging experience this week when the Daily Blips site, Horror Blips suddenly -- and without explanation -- self-destructed.

If you visit the site formerly known as Horror Blips today, you get the following blanket message: "Thank you for your interest, but the website you are trying to visit is no longer being supported. We would like to take this opportunity to thank our bloggers, visitors, and advertisers who have supported our sites.That's not a lot to hold onto.

Especially because Horror Blips had become an important public spot to me (and many, many others as well). It was a great "hub" where I could see at a glance what other bloggers in the horror genre were writing about at any given moment. It was a fantastic place to meet new friends and reconnect with old ones.

Most of all, it was -- literally -- a marketplace of great ideas and great writing. Good stories you could vote up, and it was nice to see just how much damn fine writing is going on every day (every hour, really...) in the horror blogosphere. I encountered so many great blogs through Horror Blips...it was just incredible. I was already aware of many great writers from my membership at the LOTTD, but I discovered many more. Ranging from academic to absolutely balls-out crazy, nuts. And...I loved them all. Some of the headlines on those blog stories were just to die for in and of themselves....examples of great wit, charm and raunchy fun at times.

Sure, you can still find all those blogs out there in the bloggy ether, but Horror Blips was the one-stop-shopping hub that permitted easy, immediate access. I mean, you can still follow the blogs you like, still search on Google for new blogs you think you might enjoy...but the best directory, the living, breathing market place is gone now. If that makes sense...

And no, I was not EVER one of the top ranked bloggers on Horror Blips, not by any means (last time I checked I was down around 37 or 40 in the tally). And I was only on the site for approximately a year, I think. But I actually did become a top contributor in the last few months (well, since July...). And I really enjoyed that experience of finding and submitting interesting and fun material.

One of the things I appreciated the most about the Horror Blips experience was this notion that you could dig around and find interesting stories on the Web...and then promote them there. I really got into this task, particularly in regards to home-grown, local horror movie productions (which are cropping up everywhere, all over the country...) and horror film festivals (ditto). I found that sort of regional-based genre material absolutely fascinating, and I knew that even though I'm here working in North Carolina, another Horror Blips reader might be in the same town as an upcoming Zombie Walk, or the upcoming Hitchcock retrospective, or...etc., etc. I don't want to get high-and-mighty and claim I was doing anyone a big service or anything. I was just a middle man having fun, but I liked digging up weird and unusual stuff and then passing it on to others. And I really loved seeing what others had found too. I guess that's what a community is about, finding the niche where you are comfortable, and sharing what you like.

After losing Horror Blips, I've decided that even in the absence of the popular site, it's well-worth bringing some of this genre material to the attention of readers here. So, where and when I can, I'm going to post links here to stories about local horror movies in production, great film retrospectives at town libraries, and upcoming genre film festivals. I just really dig that stuff, and I hope you do as well.

I'll miss Horror Blips. But I'm glad it was there in the first place, and I know I take away a lot of "good" from having joined that one-stop hub of ideas, laughs and screams.