In that state between sleeping and waking, when you are conscious of your surroundings but are unable to muster the strength to actually leave the bed, a lot of extremely useless contemplation can happen. This morning I was thinking about blogging. Why do it? Why read it? Why am I increasingly dissatisfied with the blogs that turned me onto the medium?
A wise man named Mike Judge once declared, in the movie Office Space, "People can get a cheeseburger anywhere, ok? They come to Chotchkie’s for the atmosphere and the attitude." Well, you can get news anywhere. The blogs I used to like that have tended more and more toward news aggregation over creative expression and discussion have slowly begun to drop off my radar. However, blogs that have something unique about them (the blogger's job or area of expertise, for example) will hold my interest as long as the content relates to or takes advantage of that specialty. But blogs that have something special about their authors that could provide an interesting slant to the discussion therein but which consistently refuse to do so in favor of water cooler arguments about the latest headlines really irk me, and reading them feels like a waste of time.
I like blogging because it lets me communicate, to old friends and strangers, my personal ideas of the good, by which I mean both philosophy and ridiculously cool stuff I find online. My personal opinion is that the War on Terror ruined a lot of blogs and put a weird spin on the blogging community's development. But then who am I? I'm just a blog reader since 2001 and blogger since March with too much to say.
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