Could someone explain Blogs to me...

[Nicodemus Phaulkon]

...and help me understand if it's something beyond a individualistic egocentric whine-fest? Certainly the few that I've been invited to view fall into that category; it seems that everyone is sufficiently world-important enough to consider their sniveling worthy of public scrutiny.

Time was when a person kept a personal journal or diary, it was carefully kept secret and to them alone. It allowed them to express their innermost thoughts on dangerous topics (either trivial or of import) without fear of recrimination or discovery. It was, for some, a vent or outlet for an individual to express their duress without burdening another person. Blogs seem to be the antithesis of this ideal.

Why, on earth, would someone keep a on-going diatribe about their trivial situations in their personal life, and publish it on a publicly-viewable (which is to not indicate that many actually read the thing, but still) website for anyone to see? In an age that the individual should be taking extraordinary measures to protect their identities, this seems to oscillate between moronic and careless. The fact that it's so-very popular to do so would indicate that I'm "missing something" here... but then again, a lot of people watch "Reality TV" too; popularity was never an indicator of intelligence or wisdom.

'Splain, please.

*tips helm*

[--Pete]

Hi,

I was told that humans were selected for a big brain, for intelligence. Maybe once, but no longer. I guess Nature took one look at post industrial humanity, sighed, and thought, "Well, I screwed it up again."

Blogs? They go along with a society where people exhibit their individualism by dressing all alike, talking all alike, going to the same movies, watching the same TV. When your life is just like everybody else's, whats to keep secret?

--Pete

[Jeunemaitre]

...and help me understand if it's something beyond a individualistic egocentric whine-fest?  Certainly the few that I've been invited to view fall into that category; it seems that everyone is sufficiently world-important enough to consider their sniveling worthy of public scrutiny.

The thing I don't understand is the few blogve journal pages where the host invites the dregs of the web to comment on the content of the day's rant. This is the epitome of judging oneself to be important to the world. The problem is that this attention seeking is successful, in that anyone can provoke a reaction by pushing the right buttons, and the host simply needs to throw in the right buzzwords to give the viewers a need to comment. It reminds me: I can't remember what book it's in, but I think it's one of the Hitchhiker’s Guide series where Zaphod survives the machine designed to give you perspective on your place in the universe (causing the head of everyone who experienced it to explode) because he's actually in a highly detailed, self-contained universe that is in fact centered around his existence.

If you invite people to a party, you can convince yourself that they've come to see you. Doesn't mean it's true, but you can think that way if you want to.

edit: SGP errors

[Cryptic]

I believe it has something to do with The False Sense of Individual Entitlement ™, vying with the Anonymous Masses Yearning to Be Acknowledged, multiplied by the I Am a Unique and Beautiful Snowflake Theory, finally squared by the Seeking a Mundane Application for Worldwide Connectivity quandary.
:P

I don't read blogs anymore; I occasionally check out Neil Gaiman's web journal, because it's thoughtful and entertaining. I used to keep up with William Gibson. That's about it. The rest of my friends, when they're telling me about their blogs or LJ exploits, I just smile and nod and say, "Why don't we meet for coffee and you can tell me all about it?"

This provokes stares of oddity, although most take me up for it. Imagine - two 21st-century individuals sitting down *in person* and talking about things best not shared in virtual space! It boggles the mind, I tell you, it boggles it to no end ...

Ssssss, human interaction, it burnsss ussss ...

:lol:

[ShadowHM]

But there is one that I actually do go and read. :)

It belongs to a friend of considerable wit who lives in Singapore. Since we are on pretty much diametrically opposed time zones, I seldom get to 'converse' with her via ICQ.

So, I read her commentary on the world around her, respond in the space provided, read her response, etc. Works for me. It is a bit like an email correspondance, I guess, albeit with fewer snide remarks than we might otherwise make about others. :ph34r:

[gekko]

Bloggs, much like everything else in life, must be judged individually, not as a whole, as they can serve many different purposes and have frighteningly varried quality.

I know of several excellent bloggs where kindly and knowledgable individuals have set up databases of ideas, aid, and discussions concerning, for example, cocoa programing for Mac computers. Among many tidbits I find nearly useless, this weblogg allowed to ( ;) ) set up and try out my own short-lived weblogg.

That being said, the most frequent use of webloggs is rather a waste of time and space. But hey, so is most of the internet -- I'd still hate to see the whole www go down the drain.

gekko

[LochnarITB]

I think their popularity is, for the most part, very easy to explain. In this age of nearly infinite ways to connect, few people actually connect. Life, for many, is very rushed and superficial and it seems the younger the person the more that is true. Many people have nothing like the big family/neighborhood a lot of us did growing up. They haven't experienced the connection that it brings about so they see the "connection" they get with the people they can get to read their blog as real. All humans need to feel a connection and blogs seem to do that for many of them.



Now quiet down kids, grandpa's gonna take a little nap in his rocker here by the wood stove.

[Bolty]

It's all perspective. Remember that to many others, a website like this one here is unbelievably silly and a complete waste of time and effort. The #1 response I get from Real Life people when they hear about this site (which is rare, because I do not talk about it openly) is "why don't you run ads and make some money?" They don't quite get the concept of a hobby. :)

What I find funny about weblogs is how many people seem to forget that EVERYTHING you put up can and will be archived, possible to use against you even decades from now. This is the Internet. Google has complete archives of Usenet going back to the 80's. Hundreds (maybe thousands) of people have lost their jobs due to things they put up on weblogs, assuming that nobody will find out about it.

But I don't think that it's a novelty that will go away. The Internet allows, for the first time in human history, the ability for anyone to have a voice that can be "heard" around the whole world. You can be sure that eventually, billions will use that, even just to talk about their pets, or their family, or what movies they like. Then they can watch their hit counter go up by 10 a month and be excited!

-Bolty

[Chief Fruity]

Some people I know use them. They use them as a way to vent when they can't find someone to talk to, or as a way to get things out there for others to read. Not many people read them though, mostly people that are doing the same thing, so the ideas are rarely expanded on... But anyway, they are a way for people with things on their mind to put them on the internet and feel better about themselves. Personally, were I to use one, it would be used for mostly venting, but I would watch what I put on there. You don't want some people to read them, and knowing my luck, it would be the people I don't want to read it that would.

[Count Duckula]

*steals helm*

I have a LiveJournal account, I must admit. I don't use it entirely for whining, honest! :P That's the fastest way I know of to get in touch with hallmates, or to find out if anything's wrong with one of them. It's also starting to replace all my writing email groups, as it's easier to keep track of writings and serials on a friendlocked account than a public email list like Yahoogroups.

It's all in how you use it, I guess. Yeah, there are some well-known and sensational ones. But the majority of ones I read on LJ are Lounge quality.

*insert WarLocke/Deebye helm macro here*

[Nicodemus Phaulkon]

That's the fastest way I know of to get in touch with hallmates, or to find out if anything's wrong with one of them. It's also starting to replace all my writing email groups, as it's easier to keep track of writings and serials on a friendlocked account than a public email list like Yahoogroups.

So, you basically use it as a "forum", as it's easier to maintain continuity in your writings and serials and it's also a faster method of communication within your hall's "community"? Am I following that correctly? Is this a better method of doing so than actually using some of the free forums softwares out there?

... and give me my goddamn tin hat back.

[Griselda]

I have some family members who are completely and utterly fascinated with the minutiae of daily life. They appear to be completely absorbed by whatever happens to be involved with getting through the day.

I tend to look down on this perspective, because I feel that they're missing the big picture. Does it really matter whether it's one minute faster to take exit 310 on the way home instead of 311? It's one thing to be curious and to figure it out, but what I'm talking about is the ability to focus in on stuff like that as if it were the Most Important Issue of Our Day.

I like to keep things in perspective. I know that we all get caught up in our own lives, but I realize that the little stuff is just little stuff, and I try to remember that there's more to life than whether I'm unhappy with the quality of swimming instruction at the city pool.

To write blogs, I think most people would need to have perspective #1- that the small stuff matters, and matters a great deal. While it would be nice to get to the underlying implications of the situations that are described in blogs (I *hate* that name, btw, I just don't like the sound of it), that is a lot more time consuming and most people won't be able to pull that degree of depth off on a regular basis.

But, I think there's value in perspective #1, as hard as it is for me to accept it. I worked briefly with a woman who made an effort to apply the principles of mindfulness to her work, and it was a great experience. Most people tend to feel that the details of something like serving lunch to four-year-olds is beneath them. They muddle through and get the job done, but they do an adequate and not an excellent job, and it's clear their mind is somewhere else and that they're not interested in improving even when mistakes are made. They can see the big picture, but it's interfering with their competence and also their enjoyment of the current task.

But, my coworker managed to turn the task into something of an art form. Focusing on the details of the task helped her to maintain awareness of what she was doing, and she didn't get that "glazed over" look that others get in similar situations. I'm so absent minded most of the time that this was an eye-opener for me.

Most of our lives will be spent taking care of the little, unimportant tasks that come up, not discovering the nature of the meaning of life. If the little stuff is beneath us, we're going to be spending a lot of time bored and uninvolved. That sets the stage for depression and other nasty conditions. Even if it doesn't *really* matter, shouldn't we allow the small stuff to matter at least to us while we're living it?

There's a lot of corny 70's cliches that I'm trying to avoid here. I'm trying to go deeper than "be here now." But, by going deeper, am I once again missing the point?

-Griselda

[DeeBye]

*insert WarLocke/Deebye helm macro here*

[Archon_Wing]

Hey, it's the little stupid things in life that keeps us going. ^_^

Yea, blogs are pointless sometimes but sometimes it's funny to see people describe the mudane events of life to dramatic detail. It makes life for some people more intresting.

[Count Duckula]

So, you basically use it as a "forum", as it's easier to maintain continuity in your writings and serials and it's also a faster method of communication within your hall's "community"?  Am I following that correctly?  Is this a better method of doing so than actually using some of the free forums softwares out there?

You bet. There are NO ads with LiveJournal. Not a one. True, free accounts don't get the goodies that paid accounts get (polls, custom styles, etc.), but Yahoo adds a ton of ads and unwanted spyware, and free message boards like N57 are a hassle. But with LJ, it's easy to admin, talk to friends, read story posts, etc. I enjoy it. But I'm not a typical LJ user. :P

... and give me my goddamn tin hat back.

Oh, it's tin?

You just gave me an idea. I'll wait for better lighting, though. You won't be disappointed.

[Sailboat]

I was told that humans were selected for a big brain, for intelligence.  Maybe once, but no longer.

Jared Diamond, in Guns, Germs, and Steel, makes the assertion that in any dense population (and defines "dense" pretty much as "supported by farming at higher densities than hunting and gathering allowed"), humans are selected for disease resistance so strongly that other factors may have little influence. He explicitly says that this primacy of selection for disease resistance, coupled with one other difference, makes modern mass-society humans not as likely to be smart as members of hunter-gatherer cultures.

That one other difference that works against our intelligence? Television. ;)

Sailboat

[LochnarITB]

Most of our lives will be spent taking care of the little, unimportant tasks that come up, not discovering the nature of the meaning of life.  If the little stuff is beneath us, we're going to be spending a lot of time bored and uninvolved.  That sets the stage for depression and other nasty conditions.  Even if it doesn't *really* matter, shouldn't we allow the small stuff to matter at least to us while we're living it?

I've come to believe that the little things truly are important. The big things kind of take care of themselves because there is no choice but to handle them. The little things are what can make or break a day and can drive you nuts. How many times have you had to deal with some major thing and you find yourself blowing up over some little, otherwise inconsequential, detail that goes wrong. The little things are like the woodpecker and the tree, they just keep pecking away until they get under the skin, but they don't kill you. The little good things really turn the crank too. When you think about people that are important to you, it seems that the little things they do from day to day are what build the connection. It isn't some big thing that just suddenly makes them important to you.

[Cybit]

Honestly?

I type 4x faster then I write. And when I'm writing a piece for a book, that consists of ranting and philosophy from a college student's perspective, and my mind is racing, I can type it out a lot faster then I can write it out. :)

[kandrathe]

Hmmm, I think there are some things in modern dense societies which influence selection.

-- defensive driving
-- fertility which is influenced by chemicals (either self administered or pollutants)
-- violent crime

Not all of those things require intelligence, but I think most intelligent people make better lifestyle choices.

[--Pete]

Hi,

You've explained why you prefer to type (and I presume on a computer rather than mess around with paper, etc.) rather than to hand write. That probably holds true for the majority of computer users. So what? You could type into a text editor or a word processor. Why type *online*? Specifically, why type where the world can see it?

--Pete