What The Blog Is This About?

Week Seven: Sunday 12 – Saturday 18 November

I’ve been doing some thinking about, talking over, and researching, ‘blog’ these past few days; I’m more than a little disconcerted. What is it all about?

I write this blog as part of the MA Professional Writing course that I am doing at University College Falmouth; if I wasn’t required as part of the course, I seriously wouldn’t bother. I don’t see the point.

What is blog? How many are worth reading? Is it worth the time it takes?

It seems blog is like an on-line diary; share your news, views, feelings and thoughts with the world. But try searching for one worth reading; invisible needles in hay mountains springs to mind. And there is so much else better to do than read other peoples desperate cries for help masquerading as witty, insightful, meaningful blog musings.

It strikes me that most bloggers need counselling; I don’t mean that sarcastically, I mean it in all sincerity. With the odd notable exception, what you get by and large is an outpouring from insecure, needy, unsure people with questionable levels of self-esteem, worth and confidence. Or you get very banal, mundane, prosaic diaries.

I don’t want to get into the minds of all the emotionally disturbed and troubled souls out there: God forbid. I know large swathes of the human race are troubled, disconcerted and confused; I don’t need blog to know that. And I have never had any great desire to read what amounts to complete and utter stranger’s diary. I read my sisters diary once, but that was only because she specifically told me not to;I was at that age. I also read an ex-girlfriends diary once, but that was when I was an insecure, paranoid twenty something and I had convinced myself she was cheating on me.

But, read the diary entries of complete and utter strangers? No thanks; especially when you throw in the fact that most of them are badly written, incoherent, disturbing and saddening.

Even if peoples blogs were by and large highly entertaining and riveting, isn’t there better, much, much, better things to do with your time? Like interact with real, live, human beings; people you can see, smell and touch. People in the same room, in the street, next door, in a shop, café, pub or park. Family, friends. There are also many things to read that have gone through some sort of editing and quality assurance process; like books, magazines, newspapers, et cetera. Why blog?

I can see the point as part of a professional writing course in so much as it makes us write; it is a bit like exercising your fingers on the keys before playing something serious at the piano. So, it has merit from that point of view. But, it has been suggested to us that blog may be a way to get noticed as a writer, to get published! Never say never, but I don’t see it.

And so I’ll blog on; once a week I’ll write my musings on being ‘a float in Falmouth’ for a year. But, I can think of many, many better things that I’d much rather do. And as for reading other people’s blogs: unless someone can give me a cast iron testimonial that it is an entertaining, thought provoking, moving and educational read – forget it!