Before I self-hosted my blog, before my blog was on wordpress.com, before my blog was on blogspot.com, before I even HAD a blog I participated in HNT. I made a guest appearance or 2 on Veronica’s blog and I submitted photos to The Other HNT in the summer of 2008.  Ask nicely and I might even share the link to those posts!  HNT was the center of gravity of the part of the blogosphere that I called home.

Wednesday evenings, the early birds and those across the pond would start publishing their posts. When Osbasso posted his HNT for the week (usually right around 10:30pm mountain time), within minutes there were numerous comments from people announcing “I’m up!”  By the time I visited on Thursday morning, it wouldn’t be uncommon for there to be 50, 60, 70 or even more comments.  My post would have gone up automatically at 12:01am and when I awoke there would be 8-10 comments, by the end of the day 30-40 comments wouldn’t be unusual.

Veronica: I have to admit that HNT is really what made my blog initially and drove the traffic there.  People came for the HNT and stayed around for the recipes and musings.  I also remember waking up to a dozen comments, which was awesome.  I also found it very flattering to hear such positive comments about my body.

Now that Veronica mentions it, for both of us and I’m sure for others, Thursday was the peak blog traffic day. The half-nekkidness is what brought people to our blogs, fortunately they stuck around for the other content we posted.

Just for the hell of it, I went back 2 years, to my Silhouette HNT post, there were 59 comments. Last time I played? 13 comments.  And I know that daily site visits are about the same, but less people are commenting. So far this week on Osbasso’s blog there is a total of 29 comments from people announcing that they are participating.

Veronica: I wonder if some of the HNT people also decided to do Wanton Wednesday instead.

I’m sure Wanton Wednesday has had an effect, thought that’s an even smaller community each week, so I don’t think it’s had too much effect.

This isn’t a post whining about the lack of comments about how hot I am (hahaha) or how good my photography is (hahaha again), it’s about the disappearance of a community.

Veronica: I think where a large portion of our community has been infidelity bloggers and other people who blogged anonymously, and as they have been found out, they disappeared.

I don’t think it’s just the anonymous or infidelity bloggers, I think that as blogs naturally went away for whatever reason, new ones haven’t replaced them. Love him or hate him, one of the things I liked about Southern Sage was that every Friday he had a post that included as many of the bloggers new to HNT that he was aware of, and people knew he did that, so they made sure to point newbies out to him for inclusion. That brought visitors and comments to these blogs and probably encouraged future participation in HNT.

About 2 years ago Veronica was inspired to post an HNT showing her most “flawed” body part, the area of her body that she liked the least. She wrote about the idea a week prior, and to our surprise there were literally dozens of others who joined in the idea. The HNT community seemed to rally around the idea of embracing our flaws and accepting ourselves as we are. Veronica and many others have written about how HNT has helped their self-esteem and body image. I think this is due in large part to the comments people leave week after week, reaffirming that despite however we all look, we’re all beautiful in our own way.

Veronica: I loved that post.  That was one of the ones I was the most proud of, as there were so many people that got involved and shared a really vulnerable part of themselves.  Now? I think HNT is dying. Veronica: I am not going to argue with you.  It seems that participation has dropped off in the past year.  I don’t know if it’s the challenge of taking interesting and creative nekkid pics of yourself each week, or if people have times when they don’t feel good about their bodies and decide to take a break. Once you get out of the habit of posting a weekly HNT it is easy to stay out of the habit.  Then there is the lack of comments.  I also think for people that if you are posting yourself nekkid and not getting the comments, it’s not so fun to put yourself out there week after week.

I’m curious to hear from my readers, especially those long time HNT participants. Am I right? Am I wrong? Am I an idiot? Wait, don’t answer that last one…

Comments are open, let’s hear it!