'Blogs'

[TJ]

What is the general consensus on this phenomenon? Try as I might, I just can't shake the feeling that they represent little more than a tangible embodiment of my suspicion that people who keep diaries only do so because they subconsciously want them to be discovered and read. It's psychological exhibitionism, basically.

[NobodyGetsOutAlive]

Totally.

Although there is something interesting and voyeristic about them when you stumble across one; they can be quite enthralling in a perverse way. I'd never bother with one simply for the fact that I think anything like that should be kept secretive.

Does anyone here actually have one?

[Partridge's Love Child]

I don't know what you're talking about.

[MojoJojo]

Most are rubbish. I have started having a quick gander at 2 recently though, "Just One Bite", by some dirty slut, and Richard Herrings "Warming Up".

Most of them are just exhibitionism though, and don't really offer much except to the writers of the blog.

Most disappointing Blog: Neil Gaiman's

P.S. wasn't there another thread on this a couple of months ago?

[Jemble Fred]

P.S. wasn't there another thread on this a couple of months ago?

http://www.cookdandbombd.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=3621&highlight=blogs

[Borboski]

Oliver Kamm

http://oliverkamm.typepad.com/blog/

is awfully good.

Bit of an anthony giddens third way blairite swine though

[terminallyrelaxed]

Indeed. There are some that are quite enlightening, written as they are by people with interesting lives ( see BelleDuJour, written by a London prostitute), but inevitably they do descend into turgid diaries as nobody has that interesting a life, yet I suppose they feel compelled to post even when they have nothing much to say (yes, yes, I know).
I don't see why personally, do they lose points or something if there isnt new content daily?
Another example who's name I can't remember was by a girl who worked in a an adult video store, which was absolutely hilarious with all the tales of perverts and weirdos, but even that came to an end as she got another job, thank god for her.
I think I got these from some Blog competition - was run by the Guardian? Seems right up their street. Anyway, some of the photography ones are also nice but with these its more like picking peanuts out of shit than finding diamonds among the rough, if you know what I mean...

[slim]

I have one. I use it for these reasons:

An easily editable, easy point of access for putting up prose. I write collaboratively with others and it's handy to be able to access stuff from anywhere with a net connection (inluding mobile phones as it has an RSS feed). I also use it as a form of public editing, as friends can review what I've written and offer criticism.

A central point from which to link to other places, when I offer friends the chance to read up on something.

For venting feelings; something about doing this where it can be read by others just makes it a little more satisfying.

Because it gave me an excuse to buy some PHP/MySQL enabled webspace so I could learn stuff.

From a nerdy point of view, some blogs are great for finding help with solutions to IT problems. The amount of IT professionals writing blogs is huge and few of them can resist sharing imaginative solutions.

Also, there are some fucking clever people writing blogs who use it less as a diary and more as a place to publish essays, dissertations, etc.

Finally, I love the fact that it almost feels like the next step of the internet will be owned by people again, after the WWW was hijacked by corporate interests.

I like them. There's a great article here which points to possible future trends in technology based around RSS feeds, blogs, etc. It's a good read and loosely related to the blog phenomenon.



Edit: Oops, forgot to add link.

[VegaLA]

I notice Goths use them a lot.

www.losers.org

[Purple Tentacle]

No offence intended towards slim, but if one of my friends asked me to check out their blog to "offer my opinions" I couldn't think of anything worse.

Say whatever it is to my face, I've no intention of sifting through your indulgent self-obsessed wittering.

[slim]

No offence intended towards slim, but if one of my friends asked me to check out their blog to "offer my opinions" I couldn't think of anything worse.

Say whatever it is to my face, I've no intention of sifting through your indulgent self-obsessed wittering.

Maybe I put that wrong.

What I meant was, I speak to friends about stuff in the pub and then when they ask for examples. or places to read further or whatever, I can point them to my blog and put a whole load of links up there about the subject and encase it in some unfriendly banter.

[joe_totale]

Just like any medium of writing, a blog will only be worthwhile if the writer has something interesting to say. The nature of the Internet means that entry-level for prospective bloggers is very low. Setting one up is very easy. Most blogs I've stumbled across are tedious and pointless - as if the creator simply thought that having a blog was a neat idea. That said, I've read a few that are very entertaining.

Another example who's name I can't remember was by a girl who worked in a an adult video store, which was absolutely hilarious with all the tales of perverts and weirdos, but even that came to an end as she got another job, thank god for her

Loved her stories about the regulars and the inner-workings of the shop:

http://www.improvisation.ws/mb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=4475

Tard blog is a lot of fun too:

http://www.tard-blog.com/archives.html

Think I originally got both of these links from this forum. Diamonds in the rough etc.

Still, a couple of my friends have blogs, and it's a nice way to keep people updated about things, though there are newer, more bizarre social phenomenons that do that type of thing and more - like Friendster.

[skibz]

If no-one minds me going all cod-philosophical for a while...

I'm doing my dissertation this year on the subject of Psychological Conditioning - basically, the idea that we can only view the world through our own eyes, and so we cannot tell if our senses are distorting reality in some way or not. For example, we can't tell if the colour we perceive to be 'red' is in fact someone else's 'blue'. I think blogs can go some way towards helping us see our lives from an outsider's perspective, however the inherent problem with this is that we cannot write down everything we see, feel and experience, thus we can never fully express exactly who we are to others. Despite this, I think that blogs can be useful and informative to both the author and the audience in many situations - however, there will always be exceptions.

[Purple Tentacle]

Say whatever it is to my face, I've no intention of sifting through your indulgent self-obsessed wittering.

Maybe I put that wrong.

What I meant was, I speak to friends about stuff in the pub and then when they ask for examples. or places to read further or whatever, I can point them to my blog and put a whole load of links up there about the subject and encase it in some unfriendly banter.

Aha, a bit like just having some webspace to use as storage for your stuff.

Sorry about what I said up there, I sounded like a right turd and I wasn't having a pop at you, honest!

[hymen spaz]

i found a great one - probably through CaB, about a guy's life in a call centre.

it was all about how crap his job was.

i think it won the blog of the year in the guardian..... i'll see if i can find the link....

ahh and here it is

http://callcentrediary.blogspot.com/

[chand]

I write mine with the intention someone will read it. What's wrong with that? It's no more lame and attention-seeking than posting your thoughts on, say, an internet forum.

[slim]

Sorry about what I said up there, I sounded like a right turd and I wasn't having a pop at you, honest!

No problem, no offence taken :)

[thisissi]

I notice Goths use them a lot.

www.losers.org

I see that the wannabees section includes anything by anyone who has an interest in anything creative.  Presumably on the basis that if you're not affiliated with a large money making corporation, your artistic efforts are worthless.

"Cunt" is the word I like to use to describe people who believe such things.

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

Is writing a blog any worse than writing stuff on a messageboard like this? It probably is, but I can't isolate why. Maybe it's the fact that bloggers have to write something every day, even when they've got literally nothing to write about. On Verbwhores it's the topics/arguments which are important, not the people. There's a certain self-importance about blogging that I find difficult to deal with.

Obvioulsy the idea of the www being owned by real people typing uncensored thoughts should be a good thing, but then that's the argument people use to defend reality TV. Do we actually know the real Richard Herring by reading Warming Up? I felt I knew more about him by listening to Lionel Nimrod, to be honest.

[Banana Woofwoof]

I have a livejournal, and I will admit, hands waving in the air, that it is a self-indulgent, self important practice to partake in.  I started it when I left Belfast for my best friend there who was sad she's never know of the day-to-dayness like she used to, so I wrote in it for her, then gradually it became the clusterfuck it is today.  I only try to post when I have something to say, and I feel less shy posting on it than I do on messageboards, much less neurotic because there's always the opportunity to edit, delete, lock.  

It's also just a way to keep track of events- everything in my life has changed from 2 years ago and I want to remember that.   It's part laziness as well- it's just so easy to log in and write away, and I quite like that.  I'm also pretty honest on it and I can say things I find more difficult to face to face, I've always used writing as a medium of expression because I'm pretty useless in person.   I don't use it for creative reasons, though, that lies elsewhere.  

I like reading people's journals.  Well, it depends, 99% are tedious, but it's nice to get a little window into someone's life, someone who's out there living, just like you.

[imitationleather]

Hoh. This is a thread I kept nearly starting but the board always crashed.

While I admit there are some good ones, they are in a very very very very very small minority. Most of the ones I have read:
a) Are written in a way which makes no sense in order to disguise the fact that the person's life is in no way interesting.
b) Start off with something like, "Woah, this is gonna be a long entry!" but then only actually have about four lines in which they just list the things they like and the things they don't, seperated by symbols which make no sense just to appear "avant garde" and "close to the bone".
c) Are just a collection of questionnaires of the, "So, where did you lose your virginity?!" ilk.

I suppose what irks me most about them is how they demand to be read for no other reason than that the person who's writing them is so important that we should all care what's going on in their life. Infact, what is written in them is far less interesting than what is written in most of the posts on here. But, of course, they think what they've done is far more worthy. Bastards!

Of course, I'm only going by the ones I've seen! I'd provide examples but I don't want to get into trouble...

[Silver SurferGhost]

On Verbwhores it's the topics/arguments which are important, not the people.

Now you tell me. I'll get me coat then.

Nah, I can't be bothered with blogs. They're most often written with an audience in mind from the get-go, so they aren't real, man. You can  get a much better idea of a person's personality (if that's your bag) from a board like this where people interact with each other and argue, and catch each other off-guard. Sure there's the edit button, but it's only cheating if it's used to cover one's tracks rather than to clarify one's position.


Like I just did then.


"You wait half an hour for a blog thread and then three turn up at once"

[bill hicks]

Jesus I'd forgotten how good True Porn Clerk Stories was.

Not entirely on topic but does anyone still have a link to the diary written by an engineer working on some god awful record in the US. It started as a sort of standard blog about recording some shite bands new record, but turned into an epic as the band crumbled and the record industry started clusterfucking them to within an inch of their lives (the way they were going on they would have to match the combined sales of the Beatles back catalogue to see royalties from this record). It was fantastic and I only got halfway before I moved and promptly lost the link.

[glitch]

I have a livejournal, and I will admit, hands waving in the air, that it is a self-indulgent, self important practice to partake in.  I started it when I left Belfast for my best friend there who was sad she's never know of the day-to-dayness like she used to, so I wrote in it for her, then gradually it became the clusterfuck it is today.  I only try to post when I have something to say, and I feel less shy posting on it than I do on messageboards, much less neurotic because there's always the opportunity to edit, delete, lock.

Likewise. Care to share your username? ;)

Mine is xerode. Surprising, that.

My journal is a bit of an aimless mess really - I use it to vent, whether its my thoughts on daily life, my photos/mongs etc and occasionally something "serious" like politics etc. Due to the nature of livejournal, I have a definite audience, but then its only the photos/political rants where I write for an audience (the public entries). Most of the personal stuff is friends-only or private, as I'm sure most people aren't interested and I find baring my soul to all and sundry a little disconcerting.

The politics of LiveJournal can be interesting, but also get in the way. It can also be scary/flattering getting comments from strangers, as it proves there is an audience outside my immediate circle that read my warblings.

[Still Not George]

At the risk of sounding like I'm agreeing with everyone else, yup, blogs are immensely tedious things. Thing is, though, they can be oddly useful at times - apart from Fake Blog Syndrome, of course. Not to mention Fantasy Blog Syndrome. Or even worse, Slash Blogger Syndrome. (shudders) The main blog I check on anything like a regular basis is one belonging to a photographer friend of mine, who posts her work via her blog first as a matter of course.

losers.org can go throw themselves off a fucking cliff though. You know those people in the corner in the pub? You know, the ones with the permanent sneer on their irritating pointy fucking faces and the fake designer gear and the total lack of any sense of humour beyond criticising everyone else around them and then producing a sort of hyena-like laugh? Yup, that's the people behind losers.org.

[chand]

Is writing a blog any worse than writing stuff on a messageboard like this? It probably is, but I can't isolate why. Maybe it's the fact that bloggers have to write something every day, even when they've got literally nothing to write about.

I think the people with tedious blogs are the same people who write tedious posts on message boards. Nothing wrong with the medium itself.

it's often suggested that having a journal is a grotesque display of vanity and self-importance, but I use mine for almost the opposite reason; writing things about my life for the benefit of people who consider me a friend or an interesting person, so I don't have to make a fucking thread about it. Like, when I make a new album, instead of making a thread like I used to where people feel obliged to download and comment, I can stick it up in my journal and the people that know me or like my stuff can access it, but without the feeling of pomposity that comes with starting your own messageboard thread to promote yourself. Of course, there's an amount of self-indulgence in my journal, but it's not in anyone's face, and in any case I make no apologies for daring to have my own bit of the internet.

The problem with blogs in my experience is that, on my friends list at least, people tend to only write when they need to vent about some bad shit in their life, and never write about something the love or care about. I have friends who are generally happy, but they never write about that stuff cos they're too busy being happy. You could read their journals and assume they were mopey goth bastards.

Oh, and the quizzes and personality tests copy-pasted from stupid 'Which Punk Band/Colour/Body Part Are You?' sites. My personal bugbear is people who post their 'wacky' MSN conversations, though.

[splattermac]

just while I've stumbled across it

http://www.hiptobeasquare.com/blogs/

"I like to judge a blog by it's cover"

Some design ideas more than content

[23 Daves]

Yes, I have a blog.  It began life solely as a means to an end.  I was off travelling, I disliked sending people those rather rubbish e-mail circulars (which assume that everyone on your mailing list is interested in what you got up this week, and likes being the recipients of an impersonal missive) and it seemed like the ideal alternative.

Because it's on livejournal, I started glancing around at other blogs as well and found a few that were actually very well-written and worthy of attention.  After awhile, a few random waifs and strays also started logging on to mine (though literally 'a few'.  I don't have any sort of Internet audience at all, really).  Through such things, one gets sucked into the medium a bit more than one ought.

To be honest, it's been a lot of fun keeping the blog at this point in my life, and I definitely wanted to keep a diary because there was so much I wanted to remember about my travels.  With livejournal, I kill two birds with one stone - I keep people back home informed about what I'm up to, and I keep a diary at the same time.  Is simple, is easy.

As to whether I'll keep it going when I come home, I have absolutely no idea.  I suspect I'll have too many other things to do with my time and the whole thing will die on its arse.  Certainly, there will be far more mundane things going on that won't be worthy of blog entries.

The rule of blogs, incidentally, should not be to make an entry every day.  That's a bit anally retentive and unnecessary.  The rule of blogs should be to only speak when you actually have something of interest to say.  In that sense, they're not unlike forums.

[Clinton Morgan]

that people who keep diaries only do so because they subconsciously want them to be discovered and read.

I saw my brother's old 1980 diary (he turned 13 in September of that year). He had a 'blacklist' at the back which listed his foes and many of his teachers (plus Margaret Thatcher). He marks his days out of ten and every thursday he notes who's number one. The Pretenders were the ones who knocked Pink Floyd off the top spot. The highlight of his birthday was touching Big Daddy.

I kept a few diaries when I was young. Influenced by both 'Buster's Diary' (before Tom Paterson took over) and Adrian Mole. I think the younger you are the diaries are better because you are more indulgent. The older you are the diaries are worse because you harbour the fantasy that somebody might read it in later years. I wasn't a great diary-filler-in but I kind of 'gave up' when I started to imagine somebody else reading it and thought, "Oh this is becoming a bit too vain." Plus at the end of each day I am sometimes too knackered to write. Shame really.

My first diary 1984 or 5 is full of stuff like, "Today I listened to Dennis." Basically I decided to turn my Dennis The Menace Book into a story tape and even rang a bell for the 'turn the page' moment.

[The Duck Man]

I keep a diary now.

It's a bit weird, because, as has been said above, I'm too tired to write at the end of the day. And writing a decent entry does take a while. So often I leave it weeks on end. Which means I have to remember stuff - a fair amount of my thoughts is spent composing stuff for my diary in my head.

It's quite fun, in a way.