Blog = Ego

I was just blogging the other day about, er, blogging... and a good friend in Ottawa sent me an article on blogging, which, btw, I agree with completely ... First, I'll chime in with my take on the topic of blogging...

I'm under no illusions that many read this blog... It is what it is... my meanderings. I also don't blog for the reader, although it is at play - I blog primarily for me, pure and simple. It's just another way to express myself... But as Tim Spears writes in his piece, a blog is not really as important as people think, as bloggers think. It's just an opinion at one instance in time, something that everyone has. We bloggers just happen to be in front of a computer, creating the illusion with nice fonts and graphics, dressing up these opinions as actually important and perhaps even relevant. But if you step back and boil it down, and these opinions are cheap, you can get them in any bar, train station or Starbucks...

Another myth I need to debunk... We're NOT writers. We are bloggers - and there's a huuuuge difference. We don't sweat over these entries, hell we're lucky if we remember use click on the spellchecker. Writers write and sweat, bloggers blog and giggle. One's a profession, the other's a hobby. I do believe there is an illusion out there that bloggers are important people and have an important role in society, this is true only in a blogger's mind. We're not important. I think at the end of the day, this is just an extension of our ego, and that's all. And yet another example where people take themselves waaaay too seriously in life... In the final analysis, we really don't make much more of a difference than anyone else. After all, I believe - and here's one of my favorite quotes - We are all just monkeys with car keys.... This is true for bloggers, plumbers, accountants and the guy who delivered my pizza last night..

Blog On!

Here's the article....
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The illusions of blogging
Tom Spears, Ottawa Citizen
Published: Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Bloggers are the world's lonely people, marked by deep melancholy and social withdrawal, says a University of Calgary professor and, now, author.
“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,” says Michael Keren.
Yesterday he launched his new book, Blogosphere: The New Political Arena, claiming it's the first book to examine weblogs. (That's his claim, not mine. I bet there are loads of such books.)
Anyhow, he thinks the power of the blog is pretty overrated, especially by those writing them.
"Weblogs promise liberation and a freedom of expression not found in any other medium," he says in an announcement about the new book. "But bloggers do not take advantage of this liberation. Bloggers have compared their writing and ideas to the great conquests in history, yet despite their excessive use of words, they conquer nothing. In the blogosphere, the death of an aging cat is on the same emotional level as an earthquake in Pakistan."
Oohh, these social scientists can be grouchy.
There was all kinds of excitement about "Iranian Girl," who publicized and criticized her government's actions in 2003, he notes. Lots of buzz inside the blog world, that is. Not much beyond that. No overthrown governments.
Keren holds a Canada Research Chair in Communication, Culture and Civil Society. I bet he hasn't discovered Dark Matter. I also know this: If I ever ran a more traditional blog -- not science, but personal stuff -- I'd hate knowing that a Canada Research Chair in Communication, Culture and Civil Society was getting paid to take it all apart and parse it.