Oh, Dear, I Struck A Nerve

I quote from one of my recent comments:

 I'm glad the blogosphere isn't blogging just for you or all blogs would be fairly straightlaced and conformist. Blogs are for the readers AND the writers, and people write about many different things. What interests you may not interest me. People get angry, they yell they rant, they blubber, they get incoherent; sometimes they fall asleep for weeks and say nothing; sometimes they get drunk or stoned and incoherent. Its life. And sometimes they annoy the hell out of me. I just keep surfing. I like the diversity of blogs out there, and the diversity of people out there.

Ooops, I guess I struck a nerve. It kind of reminds me of a girl I went to high school with who turned up in an "expository English" class in college with me and kept getting upset because the professor was criticizing our work. The nerve of him--wasn't he just supposed to tell us all what fabulous writers we were?

Yes, in writing about blogs, I'm being a critic. But look, I'm a children's librarian. I've been reading critically for 20 years and more--it's what I do for a living.

Right now my ten year old daughter is turning out what she proudly declares to be "books".

They're not. In fact, they are strung together, rambling and make little sense. But she is proud of them, and she's ten.

Most of the people writing on the web are not 10 years old. Therefore I judge them by a higher standard. I think blogging is a wonderful chance to preserve  the fine art of WRITING, something that has been sadly unfashionable for years!

But people need to READ their own blogs critically before they put them up on the Web. Certainly I edit and re-edit what I write. I try to check for spelling errors and to punctuate things correctly. I want my blog easy to read--I've changed the style once for clarity's sake,  and I will do so again some time in the future when possible.

As for content, you will note that I am not making any personal attacks. I could easily give examples of any of the sorts of blogs I'm talking about. But I won't--that's cruel, and I'm not trying to be cruel to any individual. If people see themselves in my "types" and it hurts their feelings, well, if you're going to blog, and you WANT people to read you, expect that they are judging what you write. Otherwise you're better keeping your blog off the Net. You certainly should keep it off surfing sites that are accessed by thousands of people if you want nothing but fatuous praise and agreement with all your views!

I like the diversity out there too. The blogosphere fascinates me, which is why I keep surfing. I think people are going to be writing their PhD theses on blogs. To me, it's marvelous that everyone can have a voice in the world--I think it's tremendously beneficial psychologically for a lot of people, and I'm speaking for myself on that!

I don't want to ban any of these blogs, they're simply types I've found that make me want to jump to the next blog, ASAP, and that I find so frequently I think it's worth noting. Most of the people commenting tend to be giving me "I know what you mean" comments!

And as for "straight laced" and "conformist"; truthfully I'm neither, though life would be far easier if I was!

And you know, I'm not truly complaining--I'm commenting. Isn't that what blogs invite us to do?

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