On Blogging

The internet machine gave birth to a monster: the blogging community. The rise of social media in the recent years has grown so fast – long gone is the misconception of the internet as a dangerous place full of “chat rooms,” in which “bad men” inhabited, ready to snatch you up before you even finished typing up a “Hi!”

Instead, this generation of digital natives live and breathe wi-fi. Your favourite restaurant now tells you to ‘Like’ them on Facebook. Young girls are now the most interested party in photography – as evidenced by their many albums showing the world how much fun they’re having. But whilst this article appears to be shaping up to be a rant concerning how the internet is changing everyday behaviour, I will actually pull it back to the first point: the rising prominence of bloggers.

Less and less rare nowadays is the teen blogger. What may have started out as someone with a passion and interest in writing, who moved from the outdated ‘diary’ to an online site, has evolved into anyone with access to a computer and the ability to pick a username on a blogging site – look how easy it is! Just click and post!

This is by no means, a critique of the community or the easiness of sharing your life nowadays – as an amateur ‘blogger,’ or as I prefer, someone who writes about stuff just because I can, I don’t really have much room to talk. Instead, these are just my ruminations on blogging and sharing bits and pieces of your life on the internet.

(1) Purpose.
Whilst I am not doubting the genuine intentions of many people, there must be a few bloggers out there who started out in attempt to get attention online. Fashion bloggers in particular have become particularly renown in the last few years, with many able to make a living, or at least climb a few rungs on the ladder through their blog popularity. Most of these bloggers did not start out with those intentions however. The majority of them have genuine interest and passion in what they do, and through a combination of interesting content, good writing skills, and dedication, managed to gain a large reader-base, and for good reason. Their success, however, gives way to a whole legion of copycat bloggers who post the same things and copy the same writing mannerisms and try very hard to reach the same level of acclaim. These blogs are promptly abandoned after a month, when the owner checks the stats and realises that they have failed to gather up more than 20 hits.

There are the bloggers who blog to blog. To share their experiences and life. For other people, whether it be strangers or friends, or themselves. I fall into the latter category: my main purpose and interest in writing records of my thoughts and life is to be able to read back on them later.

(2) Development.
Therefore, one of the best things about archiving is that you can pretty much track any development and changes. There will always be those earlier entries that make you physically cringe and you cry “How could I have been so stupid, WOW.” But resist that urge to delete, or edit that entry – you will eventually get over the shame and find it really, really funny later on. You will share this entry with your friends and you will all howl with laughter about how sad you were back then.

(3) Finding Your “Voice.’’
Hand in hand with your – mental – development is your writing development and change. You may find your writing style growing and changing all the time. You start writing with a more distinctive style and, particularly if you didn’t write frequently before, you’ll start using certain sentence structures and layout styles more – they become your thing. (Based on a true story, if you can gather from my love of hyphens.)

(4) Sharing Information.
This is the really, really strange part for me. I am, by nature, an introvert. I dislike sharing information about myself. I don’t like telling people about my day. I just do not like the notion of people knowing too much about me in person.

But over a screen, I’m somehow okay with typing up How I Feel About X and Everything I Did Last Night In Excruciating Detail, and I don’t even care if people I know in real life read this. Why is it even so different? As far as I can tell, I am not too different online than in real life – although online tends to minimize the fact that I am a walking awkward moment and really boosts my eloquence, as it cancels out the ‘smart thoughts filter’ in my mouth that prevents anything articulate from making an appearance in conversations.

Does sharing all this stuff online make me a more open person in real life? Nope. I still stumble over my words like no other and can never for the life for me come up with quick witticisms or retorts like I do when I argue over the internet, (something at which I should really be given a trophy for, to be honest.) I still occasionally sit in silence during an outing and I still always think too much – at least now, however, I will go home and type it up.