Blogs: what are we getting at?

As a ceremonial entrance to this mass blogging world, here’s a blog post about blogs.

Whether it’s well-done journalistic research, blabbering on about things that don’t make sense, or pure narcissism, fact of the matter is that blogs seem to have captured the hearts of all. It makes sense for people whose career revolves around getting their writing publicized for whatever reason but how about the rest of us? I see folks with admirable bits on how to crochet patterns or an impressive albeit long-winded political bantering, but what’s it to them that millions of others can see what they’re thinking or what sorts of knowledge they can contribute to the world?

What’s interesting is that as our population keeps growing, so do these new means of communication. Now that we have more people, suddenly it translates to sharing more information with the masses. Back a century ago, books and newspapers and letters satisfied this information craving but I suppose ”satisfied” is really another way of saying that’s all they had. If someone offered up these new fangled ways of communicating to one another, there’s no reason in the world why they wouldn’t embrace it.

Would they, though? Because they weren’t a society driven to share information half as much as we are. Right? Or perhaps it’s simply human nature to have an opinion and to see what others think about it. Perhaps because we realize that there’s this massive amount of people out there with various busy agendas, we decide to cut them some slack and write our opinions instead of mouth them off. That way, they can view your thoughts whenever their schedule allows, and both parties can brew over the ideas presented to them instead of impulsively spouting the first thing that comes to mind (on a completely different train of thought, look: two teapot puns in one sentence!).

So one question remains, then: are blogs, because of its convenience and laid-back speed of conversation, more effective than talking face to face? More effective, probably, but not as fun. I would personally love to have a good ol’ fashioned debate group, because while thick-headed opinions and interrupters and people who get tongue-tied get you no where rather quickly, I suppose it’s the “human” quality of it all that provides me with the guilty pleasure.