February 5, 2004

How, and why, did blogging become one of the most popular things to hit the internet? What is it about ordinary peoples’ lives that entices others to log on and read? An anonymous blogger reports on this new trend

Let’s be clear about one thing: I write this article with the full awareness of how sad it’s going to make me sound. I fully expect to walk around Karachi encountering accusatory glances and screams of “Misanthrope! Introvert!” at every turn from this day on.

Not that I really care, but hey...let’s get it out in the open. I’ve never really liked a lot of people; I prefer the company of a good book to a moronic socialite, and I’ve been known to take said books to aforementioned socialites’ dinners, where I would sit and read them, calmly ignoring everyone around me. I always felt that I’d rather surround myself with people I chose, than follow the hordes of Pakistanis into whatever the latest trend was.

And now, I can. I can actually stay at home all day and never have to deal with any people ever again (other than that whole “job” thing, but we’ll get to that later), and it’s all thanks to blogging. I get to pick and choose the people whose opinions I actually care about, and more important, I don’t have to make the effort to get out of my pyjamas. Here’s to blogs!

I’ll give you all the benefit of the doubt and pretend that you’re all aware of what a blog actually is: and then, because I’m feeling somewhat pedantic, I’ll go ahead and tell you what it is.

A weblog (or ‘blog’ in the slang of those afflicted by an urge to keep one) gives one an intimate look at the thoughts of an individual (generally written by that same person), updated semi-regularly, and created as a publicly accessible webpage.

The first blogs were created in the late 1990s to track bizarre and interesting things found on the Web; they were a precursor to modern web-news sites like Slashdot (www.slashdot.org). Relatively innocuous at the time, these sites were the ancestors of what has today erupted into the virus-like phenomenon that is the blog, where hoards of (and I don’t say this to be harsh!) nobodies send forth their every thought into the digital void. At some point in time, out of this primordial journalistic soup, the blog emerged, and was propagated by easy-to-use blog publishing tools such as Blogger (www.blogger.com) and TypePad (www.typepad.com) .

The blog. In it, writers complain about life and its essential unfairness, swoon over girls and boys they like (or hate), expose their deepest fears (and some secrets you’d really be happier not knowing) and herald their most miraculous events with insane HTML tags and large, brightly-coloured fonts (word of advice: avoid the flashing ones).

They proselytize for their favourite retailers, link and list sites they find interesting, philosophize on mundane topics (did I say mundane? I meant, of course, sublime), and editorialize on current political issues to anyone who manages to run across them on the Net.

Keep in mind that the “audience” for a blogger (with the exception of people such as Andrew Sullivan, (www.andrewsullivan.com ) or Salam Pax ([dear_raed.blogspot.com]) is probably at best only a few sets of eyeballs. The immeasurable hours spent at a keyboard typing out one’s inner thoughts are likely wasted on a couple of readers, whom writers (and I use the term in the loosest possible sense of the word) will probably never meet. So why do they do it?

There are a few reasons, out of which even fewer are actually acceptable rationales for blogging. I, for example, blog because it’s easier for me to write the equivalent of an e-mail and put it up on a website than it is for me to send out personalized e-mails, either to individuals or groups. That’s just sheer laziness, something that I acknowledged (happily!) and came to terms with a long time ago.

Having spent a good few months reading other people’s blogs, after all, it’s better than attending the veritable cornucopia of shaadis and mehndis that sweep this country every winter, I’ve come to the realization that there are a few basic, semi-Jungian archetypes that exist for bloggers. Most online writers fall into the following categories:

The Inverted Voyeur

This type of person suffers from a serious personal attention deficit, and likely accounts for the vast majority of weblog authors. Not quite exhibitionists, all they want is to be watched in excruciating detail. They crave attention and hope that someone will understand their inner turmoil; see them for who they really are. Some are quite balanced persons who, for whatever reasons, have become recently socially disabled and crave the contact of another human being in some way.

Most of the people in this category are teenagers who write terrible poetry (for examples of such awful verse, check out www.nylon.net/poetry/teenage.html), and who use not one foreign word (angst), but TWO (also, ennui) to express the depths of how incredibly misunderstood they are, and who write simply excruciating odes to their inner muse.

Verdict: Take them all out back, subject them to electroshock therapy and execute them.

The Exhibitionist

Making a concerted effort to air their dirty laundry (and many other things) in front of everyone possible, these sad excuses for human beings deliberately make a nuisance of themselves via their blogs in order to draw attention. They go on and on about controversial topics, generally choosing the side most likely to produce the largest public outcry from readers, since they want attention and don’t care if it’s bad or good.

Exhibitionists often evolve out of failed attempts at other blogger archetypes, and reach the point where they don’t care whether or not anyone gives a damn about them, as long as they’re receiving some sort of attention. These people need attention more than the average human being needs oxygen.

Verdict: Ignore them. That’s the worst thing you can do.

The Obsessive Compulsive Delusional Ranter

Ugh. I hate these people so much! They fixate on everything and insist on talking about it. These are the people you have to find an excuse to avoid (“Oh! Sorry, I just remembered...my aunt died!”), because they just won’t shut up. Their weblogs are often unfocused, meandering, random blatherfests that start on one topic and end up passing through twenty new ones before finally ending in a non-sequitur or a comment about childhood trauma caused by the time that their cousin hit them with a rubber ducky.

They’ll talk about the tea they had at the office, come up with 12 reasons why all squirrels are involved in the Great Nut Conspiracy, and then get worked up about the working conditions of Jewish Balinese footwear manufacturers, all in the same entry. People,focus.

Verdict: Don’t listen to them. Just surf away (pretend my aunt died). These people need lobotomy followed by an anvil to the head in which three prescriptions’ worth of Valium have been dissolved.

The Pompous Egotist

News flash: most people don’t give a toss about the myriad topics that these people have sentenced to death-by-blogging. Not only do they believe that their opinions matter in the grand plan of the cosmos, they are typically idealists who believe that “one-person-can-make-a-difference” mantras apply to them personally, or that they have somehow attained a level of spiritual/cosmic enlightenment that leaves the rest of us idiots in the dust.

They tend to be self-involved or at the very least highly-opinionated about one particular subject area, and feel that their random meanderings on a subject are justified by their profound and unique insight into it, to a far greater degree than, say, the insights of those people who have spent a few minutes in the real world, or have degrees proving their authority.

Verdict: These people deserve to be smacked around with a red-hot poker and slowly eaten alive by army ants, all the while being told that they are wrong wrong wrong!

The Onanist

When people ask you “Hi, how’re you?” most don’t expect a reply that goes on for days, right? A simple “Fine, thanks!” or “Great, how’re you?” is generally sufficient. Not for these absolute tools.

A complete lack of self-worth leads these bloggers to reach out to electronic limbo for validation of their lives. In real life, these bloggers probably does the same thing to everyone they meet: they tell you about their day, about what they did, all in the hopes that you’ll provide them with the sort of approval that Daddy never gave them; and which would drive healthcare providers’ bills into the early millions, if counselling were to be covered under a policy.

These webloggers listen to the silence and assume that nothing is better than someone saying something bad about what they’ve done and, like a teenager with a copy of a “adult” mag, engage in onanistic self-gratification to the rhythm of mouse clicks. Not only do their scribblings exemplify the classic teenage nihilistic-suicidal style that consumes so much time among the hormonally-overcharged members of the community, the writers’ Wuthering Heights, like Heathcliff complex overrides all other (admittedly puny) intellectual abilities, and is capable of providing hours of entertainment for the bitter cynic (well, for anyone, really).

Verdict: Such bloggers are often depressed, sad, and lonely (for a good reason!); losers who need a reality check cashed in a barbed-wire whipping of the cerebellum. Beat them, and find something better to read.

The Pedant

Do subjunctive clauses, participles, diphthongs, split infinitives, or the correct way to serve a Waldorf salad keep you awake at night? Yeah, nor me. This blogger is basically the same dolt you know and let’s face it, we all know at least one who enjoys arguing about the most trivial details of whatever subject is the current target of his or her single functional brain cell.

Such bloggers will debate usage and grammar rules of English (or Latin, which is a favourite since no one really cares about it), or frenetically pontificate about how nobody seems to understand or use correctly some esoteric programming protocol.

Unfortunately, there’s no cure for these generous erudites, who ostensibly seem to be assured that without their constant diatribes, the major continents of the world would engage in a re-enactment of Atlantean submersion; unfortunately, they seem to be oblivious to the fact that their constant punditry would probably motivate entire continents to submerge themselves under the waves.

Verdict: Stab them with knitting needles. Short of that, insist that they’re wrong, and if at all possible, find a way to prove them wrong. It’ll drive them mad.

In case you didn’t get it, I was being (somewhat) facetious. As far as I’m concerned, blogging is a wonderful tool. Although arguments about the technical definition of the word “blog” still exist, most people agree that blogging encompasses online journaling as well as commenting on particular areas of interest (technology, sports, etc).

But the real power of blogging exists insofar as (to paraphrase Marx) it allows random individuals to seize a means of production, and utilize them as they see fit. Since the advent of writing as a tool of communication, all writers have to a certain extent had to predicate their publications on certain constants (read hurdles): the publishers, editors, and reading audiences, to name a few. Blogging allows one to bypass this somewhat circuitous route, to provide a form of media that is only limited by self-censorship, and not by external factors.

What does that mean?

For me, at least, it means that the blogs I read aren’t propounding agendas that belong to anyone but themselves. It means that what I read is about as honest a look as I’ll ever get into someone else’s mind, and it’s a good reason for my engaging in online voyeurism; other people’s lives are fascinating, even if they’re mundane.

Admittedly, blogging is personal publishing writ large. It is not a panacea; in fact, it can (and is) frequently petty and vacuous, and vapid, not to mention juvenile, but it also serves as a function of transparency, allowing both readers and writers to examine a life from a dissociated perspective.

Bloggers are people who like to hear (see?) themselves talk (type?), myself included, and who frequently possess an overweening notion of self-importance (I’m probably included in this category too), creating a little more white noise in a sea of screaming brains, wired together with fibre, glue and a couple of handy pieces of technology. (My grammar teacher would beat me senseless for that run-on sentence, but as a self-important blogger it’s my prerogative.)

But personally? I like to read blogs because they take me out of my own head for a few minutes. And I like to write one because it lets other people iin on me, every once in a while.

An ending note: haven’t you ever wondered about what it must be like to live the life of a super-rich fashionista who’s a close personal friend of Gwyneth Paltrow? I know I have. Check out www.anamericanboy.com, and you can find out. After all, who says blogs have to be factual?

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