Why have a Weblog?
Starting this thing compels me to at least try and tackle the question. Of course, one of the answers that begs itself is "Give the reason through your entries." It's a good answer, but since it's my Weblog I will try to tackle the issue directly. No conclusive solutions, just a couple of thoughts. Besides popularity and notoriety (which are really close to each other, if not one and the same), I think that any webloger suffers from a form of emotional/intellectual exhibitionism. I think it is a particularly positive feature, especially if one has something interesting to show. Then, there must be ostensible loners who are closet social animals -- provided they could find THEIR type of society. An excess of time is also a good reason. Maybe we could correlate the proliferation of weblogs to the burst of the bubble, which left so many proud members of the new economy on the dole. I think it is the proverbial scene from the "Banging house in Marakesh" (now who knows where that comes from?) -- the coming together of individuals who in different circumstances would never have placed their bon mots next to each other. It is an amazing experience if you ever get it. I did, when observing a shelf in a University library that housed the complete set of volumes of the long living Soviet (now Russian) periodical "Novy Mir" ("The New World"). A careless librarian, or maybe a messy graduate student, shuffled the volumes around. Chronological order was lost, and an issue with an article by Stalin stood next to an issue that was dedicated to the Poet Gumel'ov. The incongruity of the two pieces of writing appearing under the same looking cover, using the same paper and type face evoked something from Python's Flying Circus. A more conventional example can be taken from the local CVS. The one in my neighborhood has an interesting combination of product types in one of the aisles. The placard that hangs on top to help the shoppers find what the need reads "Dental Diarrhea."
Many people feel the world needs a good shake. Not like between the soap opera(s) in the Middle East and our own economic travails we don't have enough entertainment, but the more social radical reformers amongst us must sense that an even more violent shakeup is in order. This phenomenon could very well be a manifestation of this need -- the complete breaking of all possible boundaries between human beings in a concrete, somewhat permanent place (being somewhat different from an e-mail, a bulletin board and an Instant Message). To quote some modern day profound thinker I am sure (it is too cliché to be missed by some bright literary studies stud) -- "Let us bend the diachronic axis into a synchronic point in cyber space. Geeks of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your dangling signifiers!"
4:26:16 PM 
|
|
