or Me write good someday!
I don’t understand blogging. That is to say, I don’t understand how some
blogs attract a following and others do not. Blogging, or as the old folks
used to call it journaling (as in “Yesterday, I was down at
Tealicious Teas journaling some rage when the baristas announced that
the steamer had crapped out.”), is at best
amateur journalism and at worst
random words
interspersed with
hyperlinks. Blogging
even gets co-opted into hawking political candidates. So what is attractive about blogs?
Why are so many of them and how many people are really reading them?
This first question is easy enough to answer. Anyone who was watched the
smile of unbridled joy creep across the face of a toddler screaming full bore
on a crowded airplane should have some insight into the
psychic benefits of blogging.
Without restraint, without mediation, and frequently without
spell checking, millions of internet users can burp out the smallest of ideas
in a forum accessible to the most of the planet at the speed of e-business.
Finally, the information-starved citizens of
Samarkand, Transoxiana can get the 4-1-1 on which
peaches work best in pies
and why Wal-Mart sucks.
Unfortunately every road as a few potholes, even the Information Superhighway. In fact, the very concept of
blogging has its
critics, even among those those that write blogging software.
So, blogging is perhaps the rawest form of publication possible, barring
mechanical telepathy or do-it-yourself TV stations. The barrier is too low
to prevent otherwise quiet people from casting their electronic
messages in bottles into the World Wide Webby sea. But then why are other people, who
may or may not themselves be blogging, reading these missives? Almost by
definition, blogs are humble, unedited things. They are compositions that were
blitted out to screen with as little bureaucracy as possible. Most journals
appear to be something akin to a Tourettes episode involving a
keyboard. How can blogs compete for eyeballs in a world filled with many
intelligent, thoughtful, professionally editted articles?
The difference between a crank and a critic is that a critic gets paid.
However, cranks are often a lot more fun to
observe. They have a train-wreck quality whose enormous gravitational
pull will not be denied. Few media are better suited for cranks than blogs.
If it is not for the objective reportage, then it must be for the genuinely human stories that blogs are consumed.
It must be the mispellings; the incomprehensible rants; the utterly obscure
trivia; the prosiac reviews of
Smokin’ Joe’s BBQ;
the date with the new guy that went
way south;
the bike trips;
the road trips;
the vacation to
Tragikstan;
the crappiest days at work;
the greatest days at work;
the last days of work;
the birth of little Peter;
the passing of Grandma;
the blubbery blancmange of evidence;
the “secret” Chocolate Crinkle Cookies;
the photos of Tallinn; photos of Japan;
the photos of me;
the photos of you.
I don’t know what makes for a popular blog and I’m unlikely to invest the
time necessary to solve that mystery. Blogs are simply the graffiti our
times. In an increasingly isolated world, it is nice to know that that
you aren’t the only crank with a computer.
For those angling to hone their bloginating skills, I do have a word of advice comes on the heels of this bit of compositional wisdom from Rabbitblog:
«The critic who says you shouldn’t write in run-on sentences and shouldn’t use clichés? That critic you can kill.»
While I admire the freedom expressed this guideline, I would suggest using some restraint in allowing run-on sentences to proliferate in your blog. So risking absurdity, I end this journal with this blogging rule of thumb:
Run-on sentences, like profanity, should be used strategically, since it is the exuberant overuse of these oft-maligned parts of speech that mightly tax the reader’s attention and damage your ability to drive home the fucking point.