Belonging.

Groucho Marx once said, “Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.”

He also said, “I refuse to join a club that would have me as a member.”

I followed a bit of a rabbit hole, today. I was reading Kelly Adams’ post about the IndieWeb, and I started to think about groups. His question was whether or not he was in fact a part of the IndieWeb. Given that he runs a personal blog on a site he owns, he’s in, right? That’s the rule.

• Personal site
• Domain you own
• You post content there before you post it somewhere else
• You own your work

Basically, if you tweet or Facebook or ‘gram or Tiktok or whatever — sorry, you’re not on the IndieWeb. If you write for Huffpost or Daily Kos, then again, those posts are not part of the IndieWeb.

But all of us participating in Blaugust, well, we are, right? Even if we don’t tell anyone about it? Our sites pretty much follow all the rules. (And to answer one of Kelly’s questions — no, using Blogger or WordPress does not disqualify you from the IndieWeb).

I don’t, however, think you can be part of a group that you haven’t joined. So while every blogger in Blaugust is a potential member of the IndieWeb and almost certainly qualify (except maybe Twitch streamers and YouTubers), you ain’t a member before you join.

It’s like Americans claiming to be Irish, though they don’t know anyone in Ireland that they are related to, have never been, aren’t joining the local Irish American association, don’t know Gaelic, etc, but come St. Patrick’s Day, they are Irish.

Your blog may be part of the IndieWeb, but they have a couple of things to officially become a member. Be able to log into IndieWeb.org using your custom domain name. This is automatic if you’re using WordPress; I had no trouble logging in with chasingdings.com. The second is to make an h-card, which is your personal business card on the IndieWeb. Again, WordPress has a plugin for that. And last, it’s to join the IndieWeb chat channel. Do all those things, and I guess you are in and can put a little badge on your blog along with your h-card professing your membership. You can even join your blog to the IndieWeb web ring and I defy anyone to say your blog is not a part of the IndieWeb after all that.

Here’s where belonging comes into it.

I have trouble with the whole “belonging” thing. I’ve grown up feeling there was no place that I fit in, that the only people who would talk to me were required to, or were related to me. So typically I feel that anyone who invites me into a group is doing it for ulterior motives, probably because they want to get money from me. This scammer Jun Yuh has been sending me spam insisting he can grow my follower base to 200K and more just by taking his course and I’m just wondering what the f*** 200K could possibly get from my blog? Or if I did have 200K people reading these words, how would that benefit me?

Anyway, his course is for content creators, and possibly he doesn’t realize I’m not a YouTuber. Video is the only form of content that is considered valuable.

I might take the couple steps to become a member of the “IndieWeb” and put a badge on my blog. But I’m not a joiner, so that might just be adding more noise. I applied for the Wes Fenlon web ring but you know, I have never even used the web ring to find a blog. Never went there once. I just thought it would be cool to join things, but if I never planned to participate, then there’s really no point to it, is there?

But here’s the thing. I joined Blaugust, I put the badge on my blog, I participate every day, and I guess, look, I can join things. I joined Blaugust, right?

So maybe I can belong after all.

Much <3 to Belghast, Krikket, and all the others who keep Blaugust going. I am so happy to be counted as one of you.