It has been brought to my attention recently that this is mundane, worthless, egotistical, navel-gazing wank, and I should be out doing something productive with real people. (not that you're not real, dear reader, but you know what I mean.) I didn't stick up for blogs very well, because really, it's a fair point, but it did get me thinking (yet again) about the whys and wherefores of blogging.
And this is what I came up with - if my job has taught me anything, it's that human beings have a great need for play, (whether that's fulfilled through blogging, making pictures, making music, playing computer games, doodling or roleplay or constructing the Sistine Chapel out of matchsticks or trainspotting or building ships in bottles or...) And they need to tell stories to make sense of the world. That's what it is.
Do you have a better defence? Let's hear it.
About horses
4 days ago
14 comments:
The kind of fuckwit journalists who bitch about blogging, Facebook, Twitter, etc. in the press usually make the same stupid mistake of assuming that people who use all of these technologies do so instead of having friends and a social life in The Real World, when in fact most of us use them in parallel to our real-lives.
Ah. Your last reason for the defence is bang on, very well thought out. I've had my doubts about blogging for the same reasons that have been described here, but bollocks to it! You should carry on blogging as long as you enjoy doing it. Where would Magic G be if it wasn't for your blog? Out of all the bloggers I link to, yours is the most interactive - you generate lots of healthy debate on various topics, which equates to a thoroughly worthwhile blog imho.
I don't subscribe to all social network sites, but blogging's educational and entertaining and more relevant than certain other pastimes I could mention.
Betty's just done a good post regarding Twitter.
Ps: what's so wrong about wanking into one's navel anyway?
I'd rather wank than spray over unsuspecting strangers without asking them first.
It annoys Janet Street-Porter. Therefore, it is good.
Clay Shirky said in the Guardian the other week that it's only us fuddy-duddy thirtysomethings (and older) who make a distinction between the internet and so-called 'real life', because we can remember a time before it. For younger people growing up now, there's no difference; it's all one and the same thing.
Mr Footman hit the nail on the head. Plus I've made lots of nice real life friends via blogging.
A lot of technology makes us more self-contained and less community-minded. For example, ipods let us close ourselves in our own world even when we're in public, Internet shopping lets us stay at home instead of going to the shops, DVD players let us watch movies at home, and so on. I think blogging is an exception in that even though you're at home, you still connect with other people and take an interest in their lives. Blogging helps us to feel connected to people even though we haven't actually met them. If that isn't a kind of community, I don't know what is.
If we can blog about our cats we save "real life" people from our talking to them, about our cats!
The conversations are a lot more interesting and entertaining online than at work.
"Fuck you, I'll do what I like!" is usually my response. Simple, yet effective.
"Mind yer own beeswax" is a politer variation.
LC, yes, tis true, but it did hit a nerve. My social life not very social...
Aw, thanks Istvanski. Nothing wrong with it, just not as easy for us ladies to accomplish.
Billy, er... if blogging is wanking, what is 'spraying over-' no, never mind.
Tim, if Janet will ignore me, I'll do her the same courtesy.
Patroclus, I read that too - he seems sweet, Clay Shirkey, but a bit naive - surely lots of people in the world don't even have computers or internet access, he's coming from a very privileged, specific background.
B, me too. I've very chuffed that my 'real life' friends are now meeting my blogging friends independently of me - hope you get to see them with BiB in Berlin.
Timorous Beastie, I agree, I didn't seem to get that across at all. (Maybe because my blog is mundane etc etc - but there's others that aren't - look at Riverbend in Baghdad, providing an essential viewpoint...)
Hi, Dancingmorganmouse - you can be a friend for our Timorous Beastie. Excellent point, wish I'd thought of it before.
Geoff - right, I'm jealous that I can hardly ever do it at work.
Del, it was good to have an argy-bargy though - too much consensus in the world sometimes, hey?
Oh don´t worry about blogging, and don´t even think about stopping, how else are people like me who are too lazy to have their own blog to live vicarious lives of others??
I agree with everything everyone's said - blogging can be what you want it to be whenever you want to do it. I would say it has enhanced my social life as I have even become good friends with some bloggers which is great. And I know a couple of people whose lives have been virtually saved by blogging - as a form of occupational therapy. Odd but true. I feel uncomfortable about journo's not liking bloggers - I can only deduce they see us as a threat but I don't like the 'them' and 'us' distinction.
I was about to say that I don't have a real life and that's why I blog but then I read Patroclus's comment and I'm going with that. You people are my world, sniff, sniff.
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