On Blogging

I understand that I'm tackling a fairly difficult issue from a fairly ironic attack vector, but I wish to express my sentiments and philosophies concerning blogging. I would also like to say what I think about it, too.

I notice that there are approximately six bazillion blogs on the internet, which mean about two thousand blogs per living person on the planet. We, as a species, are incredibly prolific bloggers. Why "The Crap" do we like blogging so much?

It's obviously a very self-indulgent activity, because if you look at the majority of these six bazillion blogs, they each get anywhere between 0 and 1 comments, and 2 if they post at peak blogging season. We like to blog, we just don't like to comment on others' blogs. So this Insane Blogging Craze Epidemic Frenzy (IBCEF) is fueled mostly by our own egos, our desire to think that everyone all over the internet is reading our thoughts and thinking to themselves, "This guy is right about everything he says! His opinion is so spot-on! And he has a funny, colloquial voice! Wow, he is up-to-date on current events!" Others think: "I am not popular in real life. I will construct a foundation of sociality on this Great Digital Plane that is the Internet."

Is this a bad thing? Is it bad that the Internet is cluttered with these approximate six bazillion blogs? Does it say something that it's technically impossible for everybody to care about anything anybody else says when they're too busy updating their own two-thousand blogs?

Well, the alternative is that people stop writing blogs, I suppose. And if they don't write blogs, what are they doing? Blogs may, in reality, be saving our generation from its more dangerous alternatives of expression, such as violence or art.

So even as I am writing this, and I understand that very few people are going to end up reading this at all, ever, I imagine throngs of hip Digital Agers peering thoughtfully into their laptops and pondering the subtle complexities of my prose. And that exciting idea is enough to get me say something, anything at all.

Maybe it's the saying that's most important, in the end, not the hearing. Maybe our age is renovating itself not from how much people are listening to each other, but through all the self-delusional expression we are creating. If no one reads this post, at least I have expressed an idea that otherwise would've rotted in the dark corner of my spastic head.

Maybe it's no longer about one voice changing the rest of the world. Maybe it's about millions of voices changing themselves. And until we figure out that nobody's actually listening to us, this Intense Blogging Craze Epidemic Frenzy will continue and we'll all keep learning things about ourselves, becoming more honest to ourselves and becoming more human one blog post at a time.

It's hard to keep typing after a sentence like that. I really nailed that one, and I kind of feel bad having something else to say after such a potentially table-pounding resolution. Anyway, blogging my not necessarily be doomed to tons of blogs that never get read or cared about and survive only for expression's sake, as I suggested above. A potential solution would involve the production of Comments.

Now the word "comment" connotes something casual, small and probably trivial. What if we actually said significant things in our comments? What if we launched a Comment Revolution, and outright refused to say such things as "Nice post ;)"? What if we instead became engines of Criticism and Controversy, producing responses that dripped with venom and brimmed with flame, holding bloggers accountable for their scrawling on the wall? I am, indeed, suggesting that when we comment, that we actually Say Something Substantial. If a blogger says something that is Dumb, they should begin to fully expect a fleshed-out comment that illustrates such, in a humorous and demeaning way if at all possible.

I think that the self-proclaimed Intellectuals that man the good ship Blogship would actually welcome such attention. I am quite certain that they would likewise enjoy dealing this kind of thing out akin to grandmothers giving out tootsie rolls on Halloween with wild abandon.

I suppose that this ironic post ends with two (2) invitations, which are as follows:
1) Do not become disheartened that people do not comment on your blog. Keep blogging as long as blissful ignorance will allow.
2) Comment with frequency, substance and, when possible, vitriol.

Now I am done standing on my Digital Soap Box. For today, that is.