Why we Blog?

I’ve been a part of the blogging community for a while now, and as I am sitting and trying to do some work and obviously not feeling up to it as usual, today I feel like being distracted to the idea mentioned in the title of the post.

So why DO people blog?

Perhaps, one reason is that people like me blog, is that blogging is a great way to be distracted when you are trying to do work. Or better still, when you really really have to work. Blogging maybe an online manifestation of the involuntary bio-chemical metabolism which secretes the distraction hormone in your body precisely when you want it to stay dormant. You can just open your blog, type out anything that comes to your mind and post it…as your blog…as your official trail of thought, and exhibit it to the world. And what’s worse is that you can get away with it.

Nobody is really going to come and tell you what a waste of time it was to read your blog, because it maybe insensitive to the very notion of the expression of your heart. One’s feelings, emotions and desires can not be defined by the parameters of conventional reading & writing and hence anything you write, however insignificant, rotten or badly articulated it maybe, will be accepted in the blogging community with grace. Sometimes even praised, with a ‘Great Post Dude!’ comment on your blog.

They are lying, you know they are, but it still massages your ego. So you make another pathetic attempt at a blog post the next day. And then the day after that. And so on. And more and more space available on the internet gets filled up with err…nicely presented trash. This effectively captures more than 75% of the people who maintain the blog on the net, including yours truly. (I’ve got to be modest; I am a middle-class Indian after all). To divert your attention from the lousy content on these blogs, these guys fill up their blogs with pictures, flash animations, colourful ads, visitor counters and so on.

Then there is this completely different brand of bloggers who think they are the representatives of the national dailies and it is their national duty to provide perspective to the daily happenings around the world, for the less informed masses of the world; people like you and me. Reading their blogs is like listening to the late night edition of Jain TV News with the ugliest looking anchors having the most pathetic of grammar and pronunciation knowledge. Sometimes they even yawn in the middle of the bulletin, which is expressed by the trend of using “….” to connect discreet words passed off as sentences in a blog post. The “…” manages to trace the exact trail of thought, they will claim. Bullshit.

I spoke of another common breed of bloggers in my first-ever blog post; the kind who just write what they see. All of what they see. The blue sky, a little white cloud in the middle. Softly chirping birds in the background, and the smell of fresh green grass below me. That light-yellow flower with its dark-yellow pollens and the bumbling bee which encircles it.

It’s a torture to read these blog posts. They basically try to describe everything around them, when there is actually nothing substantial to describe. But, because they believe it’s cool to blog, they will still indulge and try to come across as sensitive people who see the world with a curious eye, smell all its smells, feel its air and hear all its sounds. And find pleasure in them. And they hope others will think the same way about a routine scene outside their windows. Worse still, think kindly of them when they put their vivid description of this banality out for the world to read.


There is of course the commercial and technical breed of bloggers. The guys who want to make money out of their blog mostly because they spent all their college time perfecting the art of playing Doom, Need for Speed or Age of the Empires and now don’t really have a job. So they give catchy to titles to their posts like “What to do if your computer crashes?”, “How to install Linux”, “The 10 step guide to being an HTML pro” etc. etc. They then post elementary stuff from cheaply available PC magazines and put it up on their blogs. Stupid, dork and technically-challenged computer users across the world put these very words in their Google searches all the time and invariably reach their blogs. Cleverly placed advertisements pasted all over the blog, sometimes even as the content of their posts make these poor users click on them in the hope of finding a solution to their technical Armageddon which is normally nothing more than a routine system crash or something similar. Whether or not a Bruce Willis comes and decides to save the world from the meteor by blowing himself up after this is not their concern. Google sends them paycheques anyway. Not bad, for spending the whole day with Coke, Pizza and an X-Box.

And finally, there are what one can call, the radical bloggers. These guys have subdued desires of shouting their mouths out in the parliaments and senates of their countries. But, they know they are far from getting there even in ten lives. So, they use the internet. And their blogs, to ‘stir the masses with issues of national interest’. They write didactic pieces on how messed up our economy is, what a moron a particular chief-minister is and why they can’t afford to use soap everyday after relieving themselves because the prices of onions are on the rise. What’s interesting is that they quickly manage to find more people like them online, who can’t raise their voices in front of their dominating wives and resort to a blog to show what ‘men’ they are. Their correspondence extends to several days in their comments windows where they chart out detailed plans to change the world.

Well, so that just covers up pretty much everyone who attempts to blog.

The little few who remain are probably the genuinely good bloggers. But, nobody knows about them.

And if I brought them up here anyway, you’ll say I spoilt the ending!