Blogging is still new enough to beg the question "Why do people blog ?" and further "What drives people to blogging ?" Micheal Karen attempts answering both. According to him :
"Bloggers think of themselves as rebels against mainstream society, but that rebellion is mostly confined to cyberspace, which makes blogging as melancholic and illusionary as Don Quixote tilting at windmills"
What makes this analysis questionable are the underlying assumptions i.e. bloggers are rebelling against mainstream society - food and travel blogs for instance clearly don't fit that description. What's so rebellious and anti-establishment about posting an unusual cake recipe, the how-to for brewing beer at home or a photoblog of the trip to Machu Pichu ? People always shared such things with friends and family. A blog has just made the process much easier. The global scope of this sharing is a www phenomenon of which blogs are just an incidental part.
The next assumption is about melancholy, isolation and loneliness in real life. I would argue that a lively blog results from the blogger having a real life which provides inspiration for a lot of their posts. Instead of letting life go unexamined, they ponder the whys and wherefores and write about it.
There is ofcourse the "Dear Diary" genre of blogging and I think it is a good thing. Turning your deepest secrets into public domain art wins hands down over paying a shrink obscene amounts of money for therapy. With everyone and their grandmother getting themselves a blog these days, it is no easy feat to understand the average blogger profile.
"Bloggers think of themselves as rebels against mainstream society, but that rebellion is mostly confined to cyberspace, which makes blogging as melancholic and illusionary as Don Quixote tilting at windmills"
What makes this analysis questionable are the underlying assumptions i.e. bloggers are rebelling against mainstream society - food and travel blogs for instance clearly don't fit that description. What's so rebellious and anti-establishment about posting an unusual cake recipe, the how-to for brewing beer at home or a photoblog of the trip to Machu Pichu ? People always shared such things with friends and family. A blog has just made the process much easier. The global scope of this sharing is a www phenomenon of which blogs are just an incidental part.
The next assumption is about melancholy, isolation and loneliness in real life. I would argue that a lively blog results from the blogger having a real life which provides inspiration for a lot of their posts. Instead of letting life go unexamined, they ponder the whys and wherefores and write about it.
There is ofcourse the "Dear Diary" genre of blogging and I think it is a good thing. Turning your deepest secrets into public domain art wins hands down over paying a shrink obscene amounts of money for therapy. With everyone and their grandmother getting themselves a blog these days, it is no easy feat to understand the average blogger profile.
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