All We Have to Blog is...Blog Itself

I suppose its only natural in the fetal stages of a blog to go through some existential questioning. Why are we here? "We" being "me", and "here" being at this particular URL transposing my inner dialogue into a medium which is alleged to infuse with it more permanence than the folds of my brain.

I've made the following argument before and I suppose now I will make it again. Unless you were lucky enough to get your memoirs published, tenacious enough to pump out a zine read by a handful of people, or famous enough to have use of press releases in your life, the closest phenomenon to blogging before the rise of internet culture in terms of efficiency was the suicide note. Yes, this handy little patriot missile of personal thought has many of the same benefits of blogging; a built in audience, a predictable time table for the dispersion of content, potential for overnight celebrity, and the default sympathy of your readers. It even beats blogging on the last one! But you have to earn this mighty bullhorn by actually doing something legitimately wild like putting a .45 in your mouth and pulling the trigger, as opposed to logging in to blogger after the guy from Band of Horses upset you by giving you the finger during the performance of their monster ballad hit. Internet communication is now an inalienable right, similar to having a conversation with two friends at a party that another person might overhear. And why not listen? They might be talking about you.

"But theres great stuff out there!" you say. Its true, but if you're looking for something timeless and poured over, well, heaps of information has to be sorted through to find something relevant or quality. The relativity of it all is overwhelming, and brings up another issue. Even with filtering systems pointing readers in the direction of decent stuff, when is all this "choice" going to be become more of a problem than it's worth? And does the convenience, accessibility, and variety advantages make us happier than reading a newspaper or book? Obviously those are different mediums, though if you check back in 25 years I think we'll find them looking very much the same.

Are we losing our ability to patiently craft and nurture something beyond the immediately gratifying? I know thats the point I seem to be missing each time I've tried to maintain a blog since 2001; it does not need to be that good. I believe it was Yoda who described the dark side as "Quicker, easier, more seductive". And really, that perception is my fundamental problem with blogging that I need to get over. Its too easy. Anyone can do it so why not do it? But that doesn't mean it is evil or even disposable. Slam poetry on the other hand...