After reading a whole bunch of anti-blogging
articles, mainly ones that attack fashion and design blogs, I came away
with a rather frustrated feeling. I guess what bothered me about some of
these articles is not the specific criticism of particular blogs
(although I did think this was a tad bitchy and in some cases,
unjustified), but more so the fact that such huge, sweeping generalizations were made about the practice of blogging and those who
undertake it. Granted, I come from a totally biased position regarding
this issue as I have a blog myself. I also invest a lot of time, energy
and creativity into my blog. But I think I get rewarded for this effort
in ways that are not always tangible and which don't always come down to
the ever-cynical point made by critics of blogging: popularity.
Let's
face it, my blog is not really ever going to be one of those
uber-popular blogs that become a hit on the net. But who decided that
this is the only reason people blog? It's hard not to get defensive when
you read a string of complaints about how narcissistic the blogging
community is. Well, lots of people are narcissistic, it's a personality
trait, and it's not exclusive to bloggers. But I guess that's beside the
point: the real point is that I feel some of these (quite vicious)
attacks are a form of resisting just what can be done through blogs
these days and how varied they actually are.
I understand the
frustration of professional writers when they work so hard on a lengthy
and well-researched piece of work and receive little attention, only to
hop on the net and see a blogger who types maybe three sentences and
gets a huge number of hits. But that's just one scenario, and it doesn't
mean that blogger is inherently superficial.
I'm not going to name the
articles I read, because I don't want to enter into an online argument
with other people here. I guess I'm raising this topic because I find it
interesting and I think I've come to really appreciate what the act of
blogging has done for my consciousness and abilities as a writer. I'm
also interested in the wider motivations of why so many of us blog. And
after reading Elmo Keep's article,
The morning after my father died, I think it has a lot to do with what she calls 'proof':
"I
think I was much more narcissistic when I was in my twenties, like many
young people on the internet are, trying to prove constantly that you
are someone, that you’re doing something. Which also makes me think,
though, are we really that much more narcissistic than people older than
us? Or would this have happened to anyone who waded into a time and
place where it was possible to capture and share every moment of your
life with everyone you know? If we told ourselves no stories of our
lives, then the things that happen to us would just be an
extraordinarily confusing string of unconnected occurrences.
So I
think, yes. I think they would have done it too, because the urge to
prove that you were here goes as far back as leaving a hand print on a
cave wall in Lascaux."
That's exactly it. Maybe if we
started to think about blogging as one avenue via which we tell our
stories, then it wouldn't seem so threatening to so many people.
emxo
