by Silva Payne

Created on: September 10, 2009

Did you keep a diary as a teenager? If so, the thought of anyone reading it probably sent you into fits of panic. Today, blogging is a very public display of diary keeping where individuals, companies and even film and television characters type about their lives, loves and losses. How did we become so public in our personal details, and why do some people believe that blogging is a bad idea? The answers are complex, yet the basics are clearly identified.

Andy Warhol famously said that everyone should have their 15 minutes of fame. Our current obsession with all things celebrity has driven many people to believe that they too are worthy of mass attention and that they genuinely have something important to say to the world. Unfortunately, this often involves telling everyone what they had for dinner, what their cat brought in as a present for them, or how their baby kept them up all night for the fifth week in a row. Blogging allows individuals to seek attention on a much greater scale than chatting to their friends on the phone or at work. Blogging, for the most part, consists of individuals pleading for someone to notice them, massage their ego, pat them on the head and validate their existence.

Many people blog anonymously. Or at least they think they do. The paradox of wanting people to read about one's personal experiences yet remain completely anonymous is a curious by-product of blogging. Some feel that it gives them carte-blanche to bully, ridicule and generally incite hatred against another individual or group, because they assume that without adding their real name, no one will know it is their words. Not so. The golden rule of on-line communication is to never say anything on-line that you would not say openly to the person sitting next to you. The contents of blogs as well as other web sites have been used as evidence in several major trials in the US, and it is not so difficult for an IP (internet provider) address to be obtained and traced to an individual user account. Just like leaving your bank statements unshredded for the bin men to find, typing into a blog leaves the door open for your identity to be exposed.

Micro blogging on sites such as Twitter at least break down the banality of large blog posts. However, Twitter's 140 character limit still invites the user to post several tweets in a continuous stream. Many people ignore the possibility for interaction with others on Twitter and simply use it to endlessly spam anyone foolhardy enough to follow them. To maintain followers, and to get the most out of using Twitter in the first place, random but interesting tweets coupled with reaction to others and occasional posting of interesting links is the best approach.

The best blogs often have a theme or a relatively small sphere of subject matter. This can be personal to the blogger, or a topic in general such as school meals, the justice system or kite flying. Keeping the balance between actually doing things and blogging about them can be a difficult thing. What begins as an occasional blog to chart the progress of a new hobby can quickly turn into a diatribe of other web sources and links that gives no real information or experience from the blogger but just regurgitates the same tired media clips for a new set of viewers to see. Blogging can, and in some cases does, take over your life.

Blogging is a bad idea for many people. For a few, it is a good way of expressing their communication skills and making a real contribution to the general media. For most however, the need to blog should be fulfilled by using MS Word and a memory stick instead of inflicting their social inadequacies on the rest of the unsuspecting on-line community.

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