Towards the end of the podcasting workshop at the Electron Club this past Wednesday, someone turned to me, looked me in the eye and said, “Why have a blog? Or make podcasts?” There was silence for a second or two, during which I debated a flippant answer or a serious one.
In the end I supplied a real answer that consisted of examples from my own experiences and those of my friends, mostly to do with the pleasures of sharing expertise, and maintaining contact with a broad range of people at a distance.
But it is these very simple questions that prompt some thinking after the initial answer is supplied. I could have gone on to mention the way blogs enable you to track development of ideas, development of writing style, and shifts in areas of interest. This creation of a personal archive, and archives authored by others where I can observe these evolutions, have been some of the most interesting and valuable aspects of blogging for me.
And yet, of course, there are potentially many negative aspects too, and so the rewards must be balanced against the possible pitfalls: crazy anonymous trolls, spam, falling into a feedback loop of narcissism, chasing the tail of endless software upgrades, internalised pressure to post frequently, et cetera.
Theorist Geert Lovink has some thoughts on the negative aspects of blogging too, that are very chewy food for thought. To shamelessly pluck a few great quotes from the longer piece:
“…blogs are witnessing and documenting the diminishing power of mainstream media, but they have consciously not replaced its ideology with an alternative. Users are tired of top-down communication and yet have nowhere else to go.”
“We’re operating in a post-deconstruction world in which blogs offer a never-ending stream of confessions, a cosmos of micro-opinions attempting to interpret events beyond the well-known twentieth-century categories. The nihilist impulse emerges as a response to the increasing levels of complexity within interconnected topics.”
“…existing information is simply reproduced and in a public act of internalization.”
“We do not hear enough about the tension between the individual self and the “community”, “swarms”, and “mobs” that are supposed to be part of the online environment. What we instead see happening on the software side are daily improvements of ever more sophisticated (quantitive) measuring and manipulation tools (in terms of inbound linking, traffic, climbing higher on the Google ladder, etc.). Isn’t the document that stands out the one that is not embedded in existing contexts? Doesn’t the truth lie in the unlinkable?”
I disagree with some of the points Lovink makes. A great swathe of the blogosphere is a misspelled, chatty commentary on the latest headlines, that as Lovink notes, offers no original research or analysis. However, I think there is not such a dearth of sites producing original, thoughtful content. There are several research blogs I refer to consistently that offer more analysis than I can summon the courage to stay on top of reading.
I came across (through some random series of clicks) a very sad Livejournal where the author was completely aware that no one read her thoughts, and so she poured out some very angsty stuff – probably because she thought no one was listening and so it doesn’t matter, right? Her Livejournal led me to ask, if you blog and no one reads it, does it matter? Why put it out there? There are plenty of splogs, half-hearted Livejournals, and link-list blogs that are also unread and will probably stay that way. But as Lovink says, the document that stands out is the one that is not embedded in existing contexts – and along with the banal, there are also some real gems which are surely on no one’s blogroll.
So why have a blog?
(Update on 23/02/07: Seth Godin has just posted something on this topic, and asks some interesting questions in a very succinct post. His punchline is that bloggers ought to be “respectful and clear”.)
Tags: blog, motivation
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Hey there,
I have been thinking about this lately, because when I merged my blog with my portfolio site I think I did so with the intention of changing my voice and writing more professionally, which as anyone who reads my blog can tell – really hasn’t happened at all.
I have actually taken on so much this year that requires writing professional style works – school papers, fund-raising documentation and now grants. That my desire to use the blog to write professionally is totally tapped out. I want to use my personal public textual space to “write off steam” if you know what I mean.
So then I had to ask myself then who is my audience? and I realized I blog not to have a public conversation with the world, but to make a dialogue with diverse people I know, who don’t really know each other except in certain circumstances (you and maya for example), but who I consider to be a very extended group of friends. Some of whom are regular readers and some who check in once every three years if that.
But since sometimes I can’t see or don’t exactly know who my friends are (esp: if they comment anonymously or just read) then it’s not exactly the same conversation I would have via email or in person.
My blog is not a soap box, it’s more like a street corner. I don’t want to feel obligated to write about *important* stuff, at the same time it’s not necessarily appropriate to get too personal, because a street corner is a public space being used for personal interactions. So tearing my hair out and wailing or otherwise being totally self- displaying would be tacky I think.
On my blog were a really awful thing to happen that I wanted to report to my friends at large I could write “Holy shit the world just ended” and hope people would step forward via a different channel and ask me to give deets. Also because blogs are public it’s important for me to be aware of when my desire to disclose may impact someone who reads my blog or our real-time interactions.
I kinda learned that lesson a weird way when I made a joke about someone from my yoga class asking me on a date and then realized he had found my blog and read about himself asking me on a date – not very polite of me I don’t think, to make fun of his courage like that. So now I blog for myself, but I also try to think of who my readers are and what our relationship is and what I have the right to report.
I dunno timely question there MK I have been thinking about this stuff all year. xoxox
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hey Mir,
I understand both the urge to “write off steam” and also the dire need to separate different personae on the web. I now have two blogs, four del.icio.us accounts, and share collective access to a flickr account, YouTube account, and MySpace profile. Then there are (fortunately) different social networking services that roughly serve my “two sides” – LinkedIn for business-MK and Friendster for social-MK. It’s enough to make my head hurt. Have it all in one place and choose who gets to see what? I guess it is not going to happen so I will have to reconcile myself with persona-juggling. -
Hey MK.
You know I enjoy yammering on about this stuff, but I think you should distinguish between asking “why blog as opposed to other ways of communicating?” or “why blog?”.
Why blog as opposed to communicating in other ways? good question which we’re still figuring out.
Why blog? Because that’s what humans do. We communicate for lots of reasons. Partially because we miss our friends on the other side of the atlantic.
Thinking of you and hope you’re doing well.
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Catharsis is a definite reason.
A friend of mine has been through the mill lately, visiting her ill mother in hospital pretty much daily for the past 18 months. She has really learnt who her friends are, and a lot about her family too. She has begun keeping a blog to let it all out, but is deliberately not advertising it to anyone.
I like to have a rant sometimes: saves me writing letters to newspapers.
A scrap book.
And: Its a hobby, innit. Nothing wrong with a bit of narcissim every once in a while!
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I’m one of those random people who stumbled upon your blog “through a few random clicks” and I really enjoyed your entry. I’m one of those people who reads through a couple of blogs a day and never comments. But I think from now on I’m going to let people know I read their stuff, even if it’s just a quick line or two. That girl on livejournal who was pouring her heart out into a vacuum probably would have been touched by a kind word from a stranger. I don’t know.
I think people blog because even if nobody ever reads your entry, you’re contributing a piece of original thought to the ‘collective consciousness’, and who knows when it might be useful or interesting to somebody. I think people should write primarily for themselves, but be aware that there is an audience out there. The internet is no substitute for that diary full of secrets and torments of the soul tucked safely away under your bed. I think you can only truly let your cathartic demons loose only when you know nobody will ever see them.
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I’m sure there are a number of reasons people blog. For some it’s to rant, for some it’s cathartic, for some it’s a job. For me it’s a way to practice speaking up. That may sound odd since it’s not speaking in the literal since, and since my blog is new, my audience is very small. Something about knowing that my words are out here, however, for anyone that stumbles in to read, makes it feel like a good place to start. I’m constantly learning about myself and stretching my limits and blogging is just another way for me to do that.
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My blog is for my daily updates. Like what have happen to me,it’s like an online diaries.I blog because i wanna improve my language,i don’t have good language so it can train my language. My blog is simple . Example- http://piggy17rox.blogspot.com/
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Pingback from About Me « Alex Wolfe's Blog on August 18, 2009 at 1:51 am
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I’m looking back on this post now and find my reference to Friendster amusing (can’t believe I hung onto my account there till 2007!), and think that with Facebook’s new privacy controls, and now two Twitter accounts as well, I do have much more segmentation of public/private personae going on, and a different kind of “broadcasting”.
Even with all these social networking tools and micro-blogging platforms, the fundamental questions around why we blog are still interesting to me. It’s great to read everyone’s comments (and I’ve checked out all your blogs!), I think if anything, blogging is a way to discover what motivates you and if you want an audience or prefer working behind the scenes — and these are key things to know about yourself.
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Unadulterated words, some unadulterated words man. Totally made my day.
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