The Dilemmas of Blogging
Posted by Evan on Friday, 31 March 2006 at 10:26 am
I got an email today from a former lover of mine who’d become concerned with the thematic direction my blog has taken, or rather, what the content of recent posts implies about my lifestyle. This got me thinking a lot about why I blog, and particularly about the choices I make in regard to what I blog.
In the beginning I had clear motivations for what I was doing, although I don’t think I’ve ever really addressed any of them here. Primarily I was getting seriously fed up with sending off long group emails to a contact list of 76 people and only getting an average of about five replies. I guess it’s a reality of extended travel that the number of replies you get dwindles over time—there’s only so many times a person can read about what a great time you’re having without getting royally sick of it. Conditions in most Chinese internet café’s were pretty rough, and after spending two or more hours writing up an email it seemed like such a shame for that record to just disappear.
When Olen suggested that he could set me up with a blog it seemed like a good way to sidestep this issue. By notifying people of the blog and then posting to a central point I could monitor the statistics on how many people were actually reading what I wrote, broken down by country codes. What I didn’t expect was that far more people in China and around the world would read my blog than people I knew back home.
There’s been a lot written about the nature of blogs and the mediocrity of much of their content, but the following caught my eye recently:
“Blog: The word “blog” is literally shorthand for “boring;” a vulgar, overused word that strikes your ear with the dull thud of a cudgel to the soft spot of a child. It’s an abbreviation used by journalism drop outs to give legitimacy to their shallow opinions and amateur photography that seems to be permanently stuck in first draft hell. Looking in the archives of the blogs, one would expect someone who has been at it for years to slowly hone their craft and improve their writing and photographs, since it’s usually safe to assume that if someone does something long enough, he or she will eventually not suck at it. Even with lowered expectations, you’ll get a shotgun blast of disappointment in your face…
“It’s an unspoken rule that every blog must use the same layout as every other blog: long, slender columns of annoyingly condensed text, thousands of links to other blogs, plugs for shitty political books, and more links to yet more blogs…
“Blogger: Term used to describe anyone with enough time or narcissism to document every tedious bit of minutia filling their uneventful lives. Possibly the most annoying thing about bloggers is the sense of self-importance they get after even the most modest of publicity. Sometimes it takes as little as a referral on a more popular blogger’s website to set the lesser blogger’s ego into orbit.”
Back when I was living in China, and traveling a lot, I had a second motivation for blogging. I’d tried in the past to keep a travel diary, however, I’m really not keen on writing by hand. I like to draft and redraft everything I write, so the diary idea just never took off. Blogging offered me a way to record my travels for a future time when the details had long since faded from my mind. To this end I added a slew of backdated entries extracted from my email archive—primarily the group emails I’d previously sent out.
At the same time many of the events I was documenting were covered from alternate perspectives by my good friends Jon and Olen. As an English lit. major Jon was concerned with the self indulgent narcissism pervading most blogs a lot more than I was:
“Some [blogs] detail verbatim the acts and occurences (sic.) of their daily life, and their reactions to them, as if they are the only person who has eaten a hamburger or been late for work or watched a particular television programs (sic.)…
“I might do well to look back at the well-meaning hypocrisy of this despatch while I am preparing the tenth draft of went to work… then the gym… watched big brother… in six months time.”
It occurs to me now that Jon’s prophetic words apply to my blog in a way I couldn’t have anticipated when I first began blogging. In the last six months particularly, I’ve skirted at the edges of the alternative, drug sub-culture. Whilst I’ve avoided capturing the mundane elements of my life there is a definite pattern of repetition going on. “I went to this party… took these drugs… blah, blah, blah.”
While I was traveling my blog was a fairly accurate representation of what I was doing with my life. It would be wrong, however, to make that assumption about my recent posts. No one wants to hear about how I slept in, cooked some breakfast, watched TV, worked on my small e-business for a few hours, had some dinner and went to bed.
Perhaps it’s time I acknowledged this trend of unrepresentative repetition and gave blogging a rest for a while?
Comment from Evan
Posted on Friday, 31 March 2006 at 10:59 am
If anyone has actually read this far, how about posting a comment? It’s been a long time since I actually got any feedback.
Comment from Olen
Posted on Monday, 10 April 2006 at 10:13 am
Yeah. Motivation. Right on.
I think that better blogging comes from doing it for yourself. I remember when I enjoyed doing it. I look forward to enjoying it again.
Comment from J
Posted on Tuesday, 18 April 2006 at 8:07 am
I can’t say that I’ve read more than a couple of blogs that I’ve come across just because they’re well written, insightful, entertaining, whatever. If someone’s that good a writer, then they’re doing it professionally, not just as a self regarding hobby that yells these are the thoughts that you wish came into your head, blogging gentile.
I started writing a journal (how any non 16 year old girl juicing up in anticipation of life’s fairytale refers to a diary as) and you can be a lot more honest with that kind of thing. And despite your blogging mission statement (blogment? blogage? blog-roll?) of being baldly honest about every step of your travels (and now domestic issues), I really don’t think you can be, or have been. I’m not saying you combed over anything involving drugs, sex, or any other kind of behaviour that was dictated by spontanaeity and that puts you in an off-kilter, gen X / lost generation / 1/4 life crisis / any other label for a guy in his twenties who doesn’t obey the three tenets of property / career / partner. Just, to sound like one of those innumerable tree-huggers in Yunnan, the inner monologue. I feel like a good shower and murdering some baby monkeys via McDonalds after saying that.
Course, me and O did / do the same. Although you should write for yourself, my 1st year module in post-reformation poetry has taught me that no man is an island. Had the class not been a 30 minute walk away at 9am, it might have taught me more. You need a reaction out of what you write, you need to feel you’re either hitting that central nerve or you’re presenting something wildly different in a vivid, credibile style. We all did the latter with posts about China, and its easy to have something half-arsed to get widely read when it involves something so far away from most people’s personal experience. Contradicting myself, there’s nothing wrong with writing about Big Brother / the Gym / Office work as long as its complex / insightful / sympathetic, any of those slow nodding phrases that mean a good read. Most decent modern novels have barely anything approaching a plot, just a bare line to hang your washing on.
Fucking chinese blogs. Never read any when out there, but have a few since. Very hierarchial, very guanxi, very apt. There’s the random half arsed ‘newbie’ bloggers, then the more carefully detailed, technically proficient ones that pay plenty of lip-service to the senior blogs in hope of passing mentions. And upon the very select court at the very apex, all the rim-jobbers congregate. Every single entry, ranging from international diplomacy to the texture of today’s anal fluff, becomes a summit for the laowai to address the pressing Sino issues of the day over the course of an average of 50+ comments and counter comments . Mick Jagger (calling the kettle black)tried to undercut all the fuss about the Stones playing the PRC by saying that the audience would only be a bluster of ex-pats and their pert little girlfriends, which relates quite nicely to the general in-depth kerfuffle you get on this range of Laowai discussion blogs in the internet ether.
I notice that a df gives her tuppence worth on these forums. Nuff said. (and she attacks guys with yellow fever - if I had the nous to put in one of those eye-rolling smilies, I would)
Anyway, put that bile down to the fact that I have but 7 hours til I’m chained to the desk for my next lovely week of offshore finance monkey work. And I need a shave, and smell entirely fetid. 1/2 way through the contract mind…
Comment from J
Posted on Tuesday, 18 April 2006 at 8:11 am
AND DON’T [SIC.] ME, MOTHERFUCKER!
Comment from Alex
Posted on Monday, 22 May 2006 at 12:06 am
I want more posts. Maybe they don’t have to be mundane diaries. What about a musing upon who would win a fight between bob dylan and leonard cohen? Obscure insights are fun to read and might allow those of us on the other side of the world to pretend they were sitting on the porch having random conversatins with you. That’s my 2 (euro) cents anyway.
Comment from Brian
Posted on Thursday, 10 August 2006 at 8:33 am
This is old, but I thought I’d comment that I agree in many ways regarding the mundane nature of most blogs. In the past I’ve done my best to avoid essentially all blogs, as I found them mindnumbingly boring. One would expect the politically extreme ones to be especially interesting, but you quickly realize most of these guys are merely standing around in a room, patting each other on the back, in what could be the world’s first electronic circle jerk.
However, now that I’m in the final weeks before myself entering China for my own stab at teaching English I find myself increasingly reading China related blogs, pouring through their archives for specific subject matter, and absorbing all of it like a sponge.
In particular the few posts I’ve read on your site have been especially interesting, at least from my outside perspective. Perhaps in a few weeks when I’m on the ground there I’ll think ‘Well that guy didn’t know shit!’ Or maybe not.
I do share some concern over what audience I will be writing to with the blog I’ve just started, as I plan on giving the address out to friends, family, and whoever else is interested, even though these groups will have wildly different expectations. Notably some of my friends would be bored with topics pointed at relatives, and relatives would likely be horrified with those intended for friends. Still, I think I’ll keep it condensed under on umbrella. We’re all big boys now, we can’t expect to hide all of our guilty pleasures and embarressing stories forever. Those who read them will either appreciate you more or less for it, but either way at least its honest. And it is nice to keep the record public, as it will include information niether my friends nor family will have much interest in (like skateboarding in China, for example) that others looking east have a hell of time finding via conventional methods.
Looking forward to more posts in the future. Stick with the infrequent but worthwhile method.
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