I know, I know. Smart, beautiful, hilarious, and author of “Why Web Journals Suck”—and still, I managed to completely overlook blogging until about a month ago.
I’d like to chalk it up to motherhood taking away several dozen IQ points, but the reality is I’d simply come to think of blogging as someone putting up a collection of links every day. While fun, I thought a blog was ultimately just a list of pointers to someone else’s content. Or, as the cliché goes, a blog was just “Intro, link, comment,” over and over.
Turns out I was wrong. There’s a lot more to them than that.
Yes, yes, enough already, okay? I don’t really have an excuse for not having gotten on this bandwagon before. It’s not like I’m not on the Internet 24/7.
My starting point was, of course, when I started checking out Movable Type. I wanted to see what it could do. Journals, yes, and blogs. Lots of blogs. On every topic imaginable
I started by looking for education blogs, because education and schooling is much on my mind these days—I’ve done quite a bit of reading about the subject, but I won’t get into it now, that’s a post for a different day. For some reason, the vast majority of edu-blogs out there are right-wing. Then (wait for it) I discovered the vast majority of everything out there is right wing. (You know, just like real life.) It took me a while—where “while” is defined as “probably five to fifteen minutes of crazed link-following”—to find pointers to leftie/progressive sites, some of which you can find in the right-hand column on the main page. Some of those sites in my blog list are libertarian/right-wing, which will probably surprise anyone who’s talked to me for more than thirty seconds. I read them mostly to see what the right’s spin is on things. After a while I become disgusted and go read “The Boondocks.”
I fully admit to having spent many hours of slavishly following one blogging link to the next and even obsessively clicking on a random-blog link to see where that would take me. One thing I’ve noticed about blogs is that bloggers are much more likely to have a story they’re telling with their blog—an obsession, a hobby-horse, be it political or educational or whatever—and birds of a feather flock together, which is why it’s easier to find groups of blogs than it ever was to find online journals.
(I keep reminding myself, “You have to update ‘Why Web Journals Suck’ to factor in all the revelations you’ve had as a result of blogging mania.” I have zero idea when I’m going to be able to do that. One of the things I know I won’t be updating is “Going and Going”—like that wasn’t immediately apparent from the state that page is in—because it’s just not that hard to find sites with more than a year’s worth of content any more.)
The success of blogs actually made it easier for me to decide to return to Nobody Knows Anything. Two years ago, around the time of Journalcon I, I found myself getting obsessed by the competitive spirit that I sensed going on at that time. I’m not saying it was there. Just that I felt it. How many hits per day so-and-so is getting, what kind of attention this person is getting, who’s mentioning who in “I Love…” lists. Donation buttons started appearing on people’s pages.
The pressure of competition—even if it was just in my own head—was one of the reasons I became less interested in updating around then. (There were others that I won’t get into now. But the horserace of journals was just one factor among many.)
Things have changed. Boy howdy, have things changed. When Andrew Sullivan reportedly pulls down $80,000 in a pledge week drive on his blog, I don’t have to worry about competition. There is no competition. Or, as David Letterman would say, “This is an exhibition, not a competition: please, no wagering.” All pressure is off.
I’m just doing this for the fun of it again. And it is fun, again. Which is why I felt I could start up again.
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One of the things I dislike about the blogoverse (other than the term “blog” and any of its derivatives) is that, much like journalling, there’s an echo chamber. Find a link on one blog, find it on all their buddies. Any dustup leads to a pile-on, and after that it’s like you’re looking at the evening newscasts: you can’t tell one from another.
I promised myself I wasn’t going to get caught up in the “Who said what” mania that seemed to make me crazy as well. But of course, links to what other people said is a big part of blogging.
Another thing I dislike intensely is the number of sites that keep the majority of text on their page in 10-point font. Holy Christ—are everybody’s eyes better than mine or something? I can’t read that, at least not for any sustained length of time. I even ran into one page that had to be in 9-point font, at most. I hit the “random blog” button immediately.
Just visiting for the first time — recommended by Rittenhouse, I think. It’s a good blog, and you have a way of turning a thought. I’ll come back!
Very nice blog, thanks for the link!
thanks for the link.
of course you know you can usually — not always — depending on how the page was made and what browser you use — resize the fonts yourself. for example, in ie6, try going to the “view” menu and choosing from the “text size” submenu. . .
like you, i find the blogosphere too narrow. and too “noisy.” i try not only to offer information on neglected subjects — can you believe the utter lack of timely information about chocolate on this planet? it is plain shocking! — but also to present a “way of thinking” into my little part of the signal.
it’s not the format of the general blog that is the problem; it’s the general mode of thinking. which is getting a little rigid, imvho.
how to subtly convey a different style, a different statement, while still being informative and entertaining? while still maintaing a sense of humor? while still offering the personal, quirky touch that makes a blog interesting? that’s the goal.
It’s also quite possibly the PC vs Mac dealie raising it’s head again. 10 point on a PC is still readable, while on a Mac, it’s magnifying glass spectacles time.
The problem is that PCs often are set to 96 dpi (even though the screens usually are still 72 dpi) so in 96 dpi a 10 pt font is more like 13pt. (96/72 * 10).