Remember: chances are, your mom IS reading it.
By Ben Robinson
Time has passed. It is once again “in” to have a blog. I know this because of the way I was motivated to resume my own.
Blogs experienced a trend-overload a few years back. Once it became easy for the average person to own a blog, the blogosphere exploded and every moderate to heavy internet user out there was pontificating daily about their depressing, fucked up lives. And each one of them craved attention more than my six-year old niece who, coincidentally, I babysat last night. I am an only child, and the concept of having a young girl yearn for every second of my time was foreign to me until recently — but looking into her dark, souless eyes as she cried, “let’s play Barbie!”, I was reminded of the early days of blogging.
Blogs are a misleading adventure for the uninitated. People go into it thinking, “wow, I read newspaper articles all the time and discuss them with my friends. Now that I have a blog, I will be the columnist. I will be an underground sensation. People will hang on my every word. And every word will be about how much love I desperately need and how much love I am desperately not receiving.” The problem is, nobody likes to read blogs. People LOVE to write blogs, but reading a blog is a step below reading coupon ads while waiting for the bus. Thus came the backlash against the blogging phenomenon.
It came to the point where if you innocently mentioned that you owned a blog while interacting in civil company, you would be immediately pounced upon and excommunicated from further participation in mundane conversation. Maybe if you had said you had just hit your girlfriend because she wouldn’t shut up about being on her period, you would be allowed to continue to exist spiritually with your brethren, but owning a blog — and what’s worse, advertising its existence — were capital crimes.
I myself started blogging towards the beginning of this dark era of blogging history. I was in a writing course in my final year of high school and for some unfathomable reason, my writing was attracting the attention of the opposite sex. Oh, how I hate what women can do to you. These literary vixens ganged up on me and suggested that I join livejournal. (benjabol.livejournal.com btw) My head swelled three times the size of my heart and I gingerly stepped into the world of posting my feelings for everyone to see. I started off trying to be clever, hiding my true emotions as any self respecting human should on the internet. Then, once again, with ginger steps I forayed into saying what I really felt.
Immediately the literary vixens flooded me with comments of sympathy and, like a monkey introduced to crack cocaine, I was locked in a vice grip of self-mutilation. My posts became emo-er and emo-er, my self-indulgence became legendary, and craving the comments, needing to know that SOMEONE was listening to all this, I posted as often as my marijuana-soaked cerebellum allowed. My mental health began to deteriorate and I chronicled my decline for the world to see – including my parents.
After I got out of the hospital for the fourth time, I cut myself off. I was no longer being funny at all. I was squealing like a pig in heat in an empty room. I allowed my blog to die – incidentally, when one returns to livejournal after a period of absence, former patrons of your blog will post a comment along the lines of, “you’re alive!” This is more than just word play. Many blogs end with real life suicide. But I digress.
It is once again “in” to blog. I know this because the kind of anti-trendster friends who I am lucky enough to associate with are the ones who have brought me back to blogging. It has become so uncool to blog that people don’t really blog anymore. Therefore, it is cool to blog. I am locked in a competition with two of my anti-trendster friends who have taken up blogging and they say I am kicking their asses. I have experience on my side. They are stuck in the beginning stages of posting blog entries that are heavily structured and premediated, while I have resumed my old habits of barfing on the computer screen and calling it a post. Strangely, the shame formerly associated with this practice is gone. I receive positive feedback whether I post a 2000-word mini essay on Kant (which I don’t), or a 200-word cry-for-help snippet on how my feet have changed colour in the past three years.
For people new to blogging, I have this advice. Blog as if no one is reading. I doubt that I do this myself. 90% of your posts won’t get any comments. It is very easy to become a comment whore. If it makes you feel any better, there is probably at least one person reading your blog at any given time. If it makes you feel any worse, that one person is usually your mom. Just write for the sake of writing, as if — gasp — you were writing a real journal with pen and paper. Also, say no to drugs.
Until next time… Ben Robinson, signing off.
Good point about blogging; I agree. Although I’m not at all crazy about the reference to violence against women as an acceptable conversation topic. It is my understanding that this was a joke, but it was a stupid one indeed, one that might alienate a sizable portion of your audience. Keep that in mind, son.
I began writing a reply in apology but it was getting long because I was trying to convey why I wrote what I wrote. I intend to make my next article an explanation/apology to your comment. Please read my next article, scheduled two weeks from now.
that was my favourite part!