Survey of the Blogsphere

In the past year or so I’ve basically used this blog as a convenient way to keep a registry of my opinions and various states of mind. My interactions with the rest of the blog world have been relatively minimal and I’ve made no attempt to really see what other people were doing on their own blogs. Well today I broke the pattern and surfed around to at least 200 different blogs. Here’s what I’ve found in my completely unscientific survey...

About 25% are in some language I don’t read fluently enough to understand. Unfortunately, these all look DAMN interesting and it’s annoying that I can’t access those wells of infinite knowledge. No doubt the answers to all my most pressing questions are contained there in indecipherable Estonian.

Yet another 30% are either incomprehensible or inane. The majority of these are comprised of entries like this:

so then I went over to Jessica’s house and we played playstation for a while and then we called up Joe and Jack was there with him and he said hi so we said hi too and Jessica and I talked about how totally geeky Jack was so then we went to get some nachos at taco bell but they were out of cheese and that sucked because I just love cheese...

These basically amount to online diaries. Clearly, these are of great interest to the author but for the rest of us it’s a complete loss. No harm no foul in my book, at least they’re taking the time to write out their thoughts which is never a bad thing.

Another 25% of these seem to be dedicated to commenting on and archiving the news. Some of these are of course a total waste of time; you can only reread the same news article so many times. It might be amusing to look back on in a dozen years, but in the here and now it’s just so much more repetition. On the flip side, some of these are genuinely interesting. I especially enjoy the viewpoint of the blogger at http://islandmonkeyworld.blogspot.com/. For some reason, the opinions of people outside the U.S. always interest me, especially when the involve the various ways in which the U.S. is screwing up abroad. The award for best artwork goes to this blogger: http://neilshakespeare.blogspot.com/. I half expect to see President Bush conducting the construction of Bruegel’s ‘Tower of Babel’ the next time I view the page. The owner of http://farkleberries.blogspot.com/ falls into this category as well and has one of the best looking blogs I’ve seen so far. All that said, there are a LOT of people in this category so I’ll officially leave it to them and keep all such content out of my blog entirely. I dare say they are much more interested in it and better informed than I am. Keep up the good work!

The remaining 20% is a mishmash...

A significant subset of them seem to be selling some specific product or advertising a business. I’ll admit that I don’t understand how blogger really serves that purpose adequately. I guess if all you want is a free website then it does what you need it to.

Some just like to provide information. For example this blog is full of somewhat random facts about Ancient Rome: http://ancientromeblog.blogspot.com/. I categorize my own ‘Rob Reads’ blogs in this category. Clearly, it’s not the best vehicle for transmitting this sort of data but it does have the advantages of being easy to do, cheap and easy to share. Not exactly the first place you’d want to cite in your PhD thesis but good for a casual read or two.

Saddest of all is the ‘dead’ blog, an idea that just never quite managed to make it past the first post. Examples abound: http://lacassosrue32.blogspot.com/ and you have to feel somewhat sorry for them. Who knows what this person would have written if they’d just managed to keep going.

Anyway, in summary, I find that my cynicism about the content of the Blogsphere was only partially justified. There’s some really good content out there but sadly it’s buried in reams and reams of worthless blabbering. Not surprisingly, the contents of blogger reflect humanity at large. Luckily it’s much easier to detach yourself from a stupid blog than it is to extract yourself from a stupid conversation.

More importantly, this excursion into all these other blogs has taught me a few cardinal rules of creating new entries:

1. Never talk about the news. There are already plenty of people doing that both on the internet and on television. People don’t need MORE news commentary.
2. If you find yourself using the name of someone you know, stop. Nobody will care about whatever you’re about to type except you.
3. Just after you finish your first blog entry containing a piece of your original poetry, immediately delete your blog and burn your computer.
4. Nobody ever reads more than the two most recent entries of your blog. Everything after that 2nd posting might as well be deleted because nobody has the patience to go any further.
5. Don’t worry about what other people might think of what you write in your blog. There’s no way they’ll ever be able to find you in real life. At least not without knowing how to use the internet... or a phone book... or directory assistance...