On Weblogs

[coalescent]

Dave Green writes about the trouble with weblogs. Ironically, given his argument, this comes via Blogdex (or blogdex, if you prefer).

He starts off with the banality of weblogs:

On the other hand, it's getting so easy to update a weblog that some users seem to type in their thoughts willy-nilly, posting unimaginable banalities, like a nation of Alan Partridges trying to fill an internet's worth of dead air: CDs they're listening to, scintillating accounts of their day at work, URLs of sites they feel they should acknowledge, despite having nothing new to say about them. It is like one of those terrible Christmas family newsletters for every single day of the year.

And moves on to their stupidity:

Is it really that sensible to do it on the internet, the most public medium ever devised? As highlighted by no less an authority than a recent episode of Grange Hill, a blogger who documents his personal life in enough detail to be remotely interesting is a stalker's dream come true.

(Although he fails to mention the inverse scenario: Someone who shouldn't inadvertently finding the journal and getting a bit upset by its contents. Maybe he thinks nobody is dumb enough to actually let that happen...)

Anyway. He rails against mindless meme-propogation. And he must have known full well this would zip around the blogosphere, so he figured he'd guilt-trip everyone into actually debating what he says. The cunning swine.

Trouble is, there's not much to debate; what he says is essentially true. Self-indulgent ramblings can be cathartic, but ultimately, they are self-defeating. I know that. I don't understand why it happens any more than he does, though, and I've actually been there, got the t-shirt, and had the urge to go back again.

There's the argument that it's the internet-age equivalent of venting to your friends in the pub, but it's not. It's the internet-age equivalent of standing in Hyde Park and shouting at the passing crowds. It's a fundamentally crazy thing to do, but it seems that more of us than anyone ever imagined want to do it. It seems that we want to be heard, but most of us don't have anything to say.

Comments

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

Knowing Dave, he's standing on a hill top wearing copper armour and shouting "All gods are bastards" just to see what happens.

Amusingly, with my IT writer hat on, I wrote about blogs for a good two years before I even started my own (an abortive Blogger site that's still out there somewhere). Worryingly I may soon be running a collaborative blog for a magazine I write for. I'm not entirely sure what this all means...

[xsabx.livejournal.com]

I'm not entirely sure what this all means...

I think it means, that even though Blogs/LJ's are the equivalent of shouting at strangers, more and more people want to do it. Less and less grasp the significance of what you write being public domain and publicly consumable, as the world shrinks the perception of anything that could hurt you "out here" becomes strangely distorted. After all, to offend someone with an entry they have to know it exists. Millions, billions are still blissfully unaware of the fact that there is information out there the like of which, if they tried to assimilate it at a sitting, would turn their brains to mush.

Most people can't cope with the Real World: this is Real World Lite, with the impression of being global and all-encompassing, but without all the ramifications. Blissful ignorance is true for most, but not for all. In reality it is a virtual pub, or a virtual locker room. You just have to hope that people who you don't know or who don't have membership choose not to listen...

Re:

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

No what I was meaning was the path I've taken from external commentator, to failed user, to active user, to blog evangelist, to klog consultant to local governement, and to magazine columnist blog manager...

And I still think Dave is taking the piss. I mean, what's NTK if it isn't a collaborative blog that gets sent to people by email...

At the end of the day, this is an emerging technology. The key to working with it effectively is using tools like RSS and aggregators like NewsGator, NetNewsWire Lite, and Syndirella which mean I can read 80 blogs and news sites in 30 minutes every morning...

And I for one know what I'm doing with my blog here - to the extent that I have chosen an appropriate Creative Commons licence for the content - I'm sharing stuff that interests me with anyone who might just pop by. And that's cool by me.

[xsabx.livejournal.com]

And I for one know what I'm doing with my blog here - to the extent that I have chosen an appropriate Creative Commons licence for the content - I'm sharing stuff that interests me with anyone who might just pop by. And that's cool by me.

It also separates you from at least 80% of the blog/LJ-using public as a result.

Oh, and welcome to my Friends list, if that's okay, because it's people like you and Mr Coalescent who are the only real reasons I use LJ at all.

[(Anonymous)]

I think that blog are just a new place for people to ramble. I've been rambling on the internet for years and years in various places (mailing lists, news groups etc etc). I think that blogs are more visible becuase they are on the most obvious bit of the internet - the web.....

I don't think that blogs are any more pointless than personal web sites. For me it is just a way of letting those that care see the edited highlights of 'my exciting life'......

Stewart (http://www.foxbasealpha.co.uk/wibblings)

[tinyjo.livejournal.com]

I disagree that blogging is self defeating. I love the aspect of laying yourself bare that blogging gives. As well as the fact that writing for a (small) audience allows me to write about and hence organise and understand my thoughts without being paralysed by feelings of inadequacy, blogging is, for me, an extension of something which I began at university, where I didn't really know much about what sort of person I was so I would say things that I wanted to be true and that seemed to enable me to make them true.

I'm becoming incoherant - I'll go off and write this up into an entry. Thus allowing me to make sense of what I think, which can't be self-defeating, surely?

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

I disagree that blogging is self defeating.

It was specifically the self-indulgent ramblings side of things I was thinking of. Don't misunderstand, I find it as tempting as hell precisely because it's public, but after last time around I'm forced to admit that it's not the brightest play in the book.

I see a difference in writing about my life and plans, things which are only mine, and writing about my thoughts of and relationships with other people. Both are extremely useful, but the latter is risky.

Thoughts

[applez.livejournal.com]

re: but the latter is risky - true, precisely why I'm keeping certain recent events to myself for now. :-)

re: self-indulgent ramblings - the problem with this is the definition of self-indulgent rambling ... the popularity of which I think is very Hyde Park-ish, but with the added attraction of obscured identity. But back to the first bit - most everything you and I posted on the OUSFG newsgroup can qualify as self-indulgent rambling (especially after John the Graduate complained that he couldn't keep up with all our proto-blogging), even as our various meme exports produced their own evolutionary thought-viruses. Okay okay okay, most OUSFG discussion items are by definition self-indulgent ramblings (self, being the community of science-fantasy geeks *g*).

Is it so wrong? ;-)

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