RSSThe Nature of Blogging
June 11th, 2006 | View Comments
First, a brief aside on the nature of this particular blog. Google is not particularly fond of the current setup, so I’m going to be remodeling a bit over the next few weeks. Apologies for the dust and noise.
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It happens every so often on the blogs I visit. Someone will post an extended diatribe or a sobbing tale of woe. Or maybe someone simply posted a throwaway zinger that turned out to be more provocative than they thought.
Flames will start showing up in the comments and supporters will wind up trying to douse the fire with such thoughtful comments as “It’s a personal blog, they can say whatever they want!” and “If you don’t like, don’t read it!”
And while both types of comments have a certain amount of merit, both types of comments also kind of miss the boat on the blogging phenomenon.
It used to be that the term “personal blog” referred to a blog in which an individual discussed his or her personal life, often with raw emotion and detail, and in which the sanctity of the person’s feelings was preserved. It used to be that the term “personal blog” was essentially synonymous with an online diary.
As blogging becomes more and more mainstream, a “personal blog” is less and less a term for a diary and more and more a term for “a single person publishing online without the benefit of editor and, in most cases, profit.” Many, and perhaps even most, blogs online today fit the latter definition.
They barely reference the personal goings-ons of the blogger and instead are more like niche magazines with erratic publication schedules. Blogs no longer imply sanctity of the writer’s feelings and thus such sanctity should no longer be expected.
People have seen this cultural shift in the blogging world coming, and have tried to preserve their personal online havens with things like this 1,200 word disclaimer on blog-reading etiquette. 1,200 words which can mostly be summed up as “don’t be a jackass.”
I do think the bounds of common courtesy apply to blog commenters and I personally have a very low tolerance for spam and nonsensical and/or ungrammatical flames that were clearly written by bored and miserable individuals. But expecting anything beyond that, like expecting all dissenters to simply shut up go somewhere else or expecting people to not ask any followup questions, is unreasonable.
Blogging is a public forum. If you are uncomfortable with millions of diverse people reacting and responding to what you write, then maybe blogging is not the right medium for you.
Yvonne posted this on June 11th, 2006 @ 7:31pm in Blogging | Permalink to "The Nature of Blogging"
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