Mark Brady takes issue with an assertion made in this Sunday Times article that bloggers are like lemmings, all trying to find fame and fortune. Of course, it’s obvious that in fact there are as many reasons to blog as there are bloggers, and most bloggers couldn’t give a damn about ‘fame’ or ‘fortune’.
My beef with this is that the bloggers that “assume your [their] blog will be one of the tiny fraction that is brilliant” are not in fact the motives of the entire blogging population, or indeed a very large part of it. It’s a common attack pointed at bloggers. There are a lot of people blogging out there and not all of them are doing it for the same reason. One reason to blog is to reach friends and family without sending blanket emails to people. Another might be to keep a record of one’s life. Another might be to record notes and thoughts for a PhD, or other research project.
It’s an important point, and one that I keep seeing forgotten, over and over again, even by some long-time bloggers who should know better. Those of us in or heading for the spike are so very much in the minority, and we should not forget that. Most bloggers, the great vast majority of bloggers, simply don’t care about the power law, they don’t care about metablogging, they don’t care about stats. They just want to do what they do the way that they do it and that is, as far as I am concerned, wonderful.
Recently I’ve seen an increase in articles about blogging in the press, and most of them really don’t get it. I could fisk this Times piece so easily, but I just can’t be bothered. Reading it is like repeated poking myself in the eyes with a sharpened stick. I just want to scream ‘stop thinking ‘broadcast’, you morons!’, but I know my voice will just get blown away in the wind of rank stupidity and cluelessness.
I need to find some constructive developments to blog about instead, otherwise my ‘blog fuckwittery’ category is just going to take over the blog, like Japanese Knotweed rampaging through the gardens of England, unstoppable and voracious.