Life in the Blogosphere: Why Are We Here?

Life in the Blo­gos­phere: Why Are We Here?

I’ve been doing a lot of read­ing and think­ing about this ques­tion: Why blog?

With an esti­mated 55 mil­lion blogs now on-line, it seems rea­son­able to ask why so many peo­ple are engag­ing in this activ­ity. And, more impor­tantly, why so many blog­gers com­ment, face­tiously or not, that they are “addicted” or “obsessed” with blog­ging, can’t live with­out it, and reg­u­larly con­fess that they are “spend­ing way too much time blog­ging.” Many writ­ers joke about their laun­dry piles, dusty fur­ni­ture and dirty hair, and acknowl­edge eat­ing fast food because they are too busy blog­ging to cook. Only those writ­ers (and their fam­i­lies) know for sure, of course, how much truth is actu­ally being divulged.

At Lov­ing Change.com, Neil Cox offers “50 Rea­sons to Blog,” begin­ning with “because you can.” The remain­der of his list con­sists of many pre­dictable rea­sons, includ­ing net­work­ing with other folks who share our view­points, reli­gious beliefs and con­cerns about soci­etal issues, as well as the fact that blogs are big busi­ness. In addi­tion, many print mag­a­zines and news­pa­pers are now incor­po­rat­ing blogs fea­tur­ing their writ­ers and colum­nists who pub­lish their entries between issues in order to stim­u­late and main­tain reader interest.

Lit­tle has been writ­ten (at least that I have found) about the pro­lif­er­a­tion of per­sonal blogs. I touched on this sub­ject a few weeks ago when I asked whether there is such a thing as “T.M.I.” (too much infor­ma­tion) in the blo­gos­phere. But that inquiry relates to exist­ing blogs.

Let’s back up. Why estab­lish a per­sonal blog?

The obvi­ous answers are that we are seek­ing to make con­nec­tions with other human beings, even though they may be located at the other end of the world. We are look­ing for peo­ple like our­selves, i.e., folks with sim­i­lar inter­ests, val­ues, beliefs, out­looks, and opin­ions. We are seek­ing val­i­da­tion, accep­tance, and to be part of a com­mu­nity. Indeed, long-lasting friend­ships can have their gen­e­sis in on-line con­nec­tions. I have sev­eral dear friends from var­i­ous parts of the coun­try that I met a num­ber of years ago via an Amer­ica OnLine mes­sage board.

I also believe that blogs have largely replaced per­sonal diaries and jour­nals, chron­i­cles of our lives. If you spend time read­ing a few per­sonal blogs, you will find many filled with the mun­dane details of the blogger’s exis­tence … every­thing from trips to the den­tist, to how much stuff has to be put into the dia­per bag before the mother of a tod­dler can leave the house, to pho­tos of a blogger’s new liv­ing room fur­ni­ture — shots taken from the cat­a­logue from which she ordered the items, of the old liv­ing room fur­ni­ture being moved out, and of the room with the new fur­ni­ture in place.

Many blogs con­tain com­men­tary (but not actual reviews) of what music the writer is lis­ten­ing to, what tele­vi­sion shows he/she is watch­ing¹, what books the blog­ger is read­ing or plans to read.

And then, of course, there are the seem­ingly lim­it­less num­ber of blogs related to preg­nancy, child­birth, moth­er­hood, par­ent­ing, and the like. One blog­ger has posted at length about her preg­nancy and, most recently, pre­ma­ture labor. She even has her video­taped sono­gram posted on her site.

It is my belief that, for some blog­gers, time spent on the com­puter is a tan­gi­ble and valid way to con­nect with oth­ers, while, for oth­ers, it is an avoid­ance tech­nique, spar­ing the writer from deal­ing with real human beings in their own com­mu­ni­ties. I have no sci­en­tific proof, of course, but I believe that many of the con­ver­sa­tions tak­ing place on-line would have, in the days before the Inter­net, taken place over the back fence, at the kitchen table with the cof­fee pot per­co­lat­ing, at the gro­cery store, laun­dro­mat or salon, on the tele­phone, or in a church, com­mu­nity cen­ter or other social gathering.

On the plus side, in cyber­space we may be encoun­ter­ing a more diverse pop­u­la­tion than exists in our real neigh­bor­hoods. But can blog com­ments trump in-person conversations?

I would also spec­u­late that much of the time spent on-line now might have been devoted ten or more years ago to “my sto­ries.” Most of us grew up watch­ing day­time soaps. My col­lege room­mates and I planned our classes around “One Life to Live” and “Gen­eral Hos­pi­tal” (that was in the days before vcr’s). Not only are we watch­ing dif­fer­ent types and a far wider vari­ety of pro­grams these days, we have no need to com­mit to view­ing them at any spe­cific time because we record them and watch at our con­ve­nience. And I con­fess that I lis­ten to more than actu­ally watch 99% of the tele­vi­sion that I see, the one excep­tion being “The Sopra­nos” because life grinds to a screech­ing halt for that one hour. For instance, as I write this, I am “watch­ing” this past Thursday’s episode of “The View.” How many of you “watch” tele­vi­sion this way while blog­ging or surf­ing the ‘Net? How many of you blog, as I do, between fold­ing loads of laun­dry, unload­ing and load­ing the dish­washer, or per­form­ing other house­hold chores?

I won­der how much per­sonal stress, frus­tra­tion, anger and heartache is resolved via blog­ging. And how many psy­chi­a­trists and psy­chol­o­gists might be out of busi­ness because blog­gers post about their neu­roses, psy­choses and diag­noses, and find sup­port, solace and a great deal of use­ful infor­ma­tion, includ­ing cop­ing mech­a­nisms, from other blog­gers sim­i­larly afflicted.

How many lost loves have been found because one of the part­ners blogged about pin­ing for the other?

One writer sug­gests — and I para­phrase here — that before sit­ting down to cre­ate and pub­lish our first blog entry, we ask our­selves, “Why am I doing this? What is it that I am seek­ing to accom­plish? What will my words con­tribute to the con­ver­sa­tion already tak­ing place in cyberspace?”

If you have a per­sonal blog, did you ask your­self those ques­tions before launch­ing it? Did you assess your blog­ging goals, ana­lyze who your read­ers would be, con­sider what impact your words might have upon your read­ers? Did you con­tem­plate whether or not you could make a valu­able con­tri­bu­tion to the cyber-dialogue tak­ing place 24/7? Or did you just fig­ure it might be fun because “every­body is doing it” or, as Neil Cox sug­gested, “because you [could].”

Even if you did not ask those ques­tions at the out­set, it is never too late to do so.

Before you log in and post another entry in your per­sonal blog, I chal­lenge you to ask your­self, “Why am I blogging?”

Orig­i­nally pub­lished at Write Stuff.

1. On one site, the author posts her favorite lines from that week’s episode of “Grey’s Anatomy”

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