Friday, September 08, 2006

In dispraise of blogging

I don't like the idea of blogging. Not at all.
Yes, partly it is my Neo-Luddite distaste for technology. The Internet is too profuse: it challenges, overwhelms my inner calm. But I've never liked the idea of keeping a paper diary either. There seems to be something so desperately needy, attention-seeking, praise-demanding about it. (Nobody ever keeps a really private diary, do they? I'm sure all diarists have half an eye on publication of some sort, yearn to have their thoughts read by others - whether the public at large, or generations yet unborn, or the intimates from whom they supposedly strive to keep the book hidden.) A strange mix of insecurity and megalomania - it's all so "Look at me! My life is so interesting and unusual and special!"
And I've always been sceptical as to whether anyone who spends that much time writing about their life can actually be living one. Maybe Pepys et al could toss off a few thousand words in a mere fifteen minutes or so, and then call it a night, slipping immediately into deep repose. Me, I'm a slow writer. Careful. Thoughtful. And if I try doing too much writing late at night, the turbid brain runs out of control, condemning me to hours of insomnia.
If there's a problem with diaries and the kind of people who keep them, then that problem is 100 times worse with blogging, where the writer dispenses with any pretence of recording his thoughts only for his own benefit, and actively seeks to parade them before the whole world. The blogosphere (and what a portentous, comically ugly word that is!) is, I fear, an orgy of narcissism.
So why am I doing it?
Hmmm. An interesting question. Let me ponder.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Indeed, why are you blogging? And why am I responding to ancient posts?

I'd be interested to hear you revisit the the dispraise of blogging, now that you are 6 months into the project and have been extremely prolific in your writings/postings.

Your revisit of dispraise of blogging will answer my first question. I am left to answer the second question, myself.

Froog said...

Well, I think I largely answered this self-posed question in the next two posts.

I am a little surprised (and horrified!) at myself that I have got so "into it" - but I'm still in control, I think; not REALLY a blogger yet!

And we're still 3 or 4 weeks shy of the 6-month milestone. And I have been substantially curtailed over the last 4 weeks. So, I don't think I will be ordering the half-anniversary cake for a while yet.

Anonymous said...

"not REALLY a blogger yet!"

I disagree!
(but I'm too tired to back my disagreement with facts and analysis. So, I'll just leave it at that.)