The World's Greatest Blog

Linda bought me a copy of FHM (the Australian version) yesterday, while she was hanging around waiting for a train, and yet again I’ve read something with which I take issue.

“What’s a bigger waste of life – posting your every thought on an internet blog, or playing Dungeons & Dragons?

Blogging – no one is interested by your inner turmoil/critique of pop culture. Sorry.” FHM Australia 109 (05/2007)

Without getting involved in statistics which I am certain would show that, in fact, more people read blogs than buy a copy of FHM (to look at the pictures), I simply wish to point out that – perhaps – saying “she is hot/sexy/has big boob” every single month about another vapid and otherwise irrelevant vaguely famous person is not perhaps the most gainful use of time. At what point in a journalist’s life does he consider it to be the best use of his undoubted talent (!) to do this? OK, I’m being harsh, the pictures of nearly naked ladies are occasionally interspersed with a banal article about some bloke who got his balls trapped in a vice or something.

Anyway, this set me thinking, why do we do it? Blogging, I mean. I can’t speak for everyone of course, but I’ll have a stab at why I do, but it will take a while, so bear with me… I’m actually going somewhere with this one…

Despite FHMs best attempts to deny this, it is actually interpretations of popular culture, or the private thoughts of another person – coherently and accurately described (in whatever medium) – and the insight this gives us into what drives other people: these are often the most fascinating stories we’ll ever read (or hear, or see). As if to highlight this, the best part of FHM was, in truth, the final page – the ‘True Stories’ – a couple of which were actually quite funny (maybe as they weren’t written by FHM staffers?).

But what does this say about bloggers? And why do I write all this crap down? Don’t worry, I’m getting to it.

Every so often, I’ll read something – in a blog, or on MySpace, or watch a video on YouTube – which is undoubtedly both entertaining and deeply interesting for precisely the above reasons: it gives me an insight into someone else’s life. One I would not have had any idea about – or comprehension of – had I not seen or read about it. In a word, such stories are fascinating.

I write because I can. Because I am. Is there an end result? Occasionally I’ll make a conclusion or two, but perhaps the main reason I write is to entertain, or at least to explain a little about how I think, which can be, and sometimes is, entertaining in itself.

I’ve spent a good deal of time these past months ‘sitting on ass.’ Thinking. Or reading. Or writing on here. And what have I learned? A little. As I said, I spend more and more time reading. I’ve gone a bit overboard probably, but I’ll read anything and everything, in every format. But why do I write? Or, more to the point, why do I blog?

The reason I write this thing is fairly difficult to explain, however, the other day when I was on the balcony having a smoke and a think about things I came up with a fairly good one: it’s in my nature. Call it what you will: breeding (being from journalistic/lawyer stock); arrogance; whatever. There is a part of me that wants to explain myself to the world at large. More precisely, I am absolutely certain that barely anyone on this planet truly knows what is going through my mind; how I feel about certain things; or, sometimes, whether I even have an opinion at all. I just want to put my ideas ‘out there’ for want of a better phraseology – and try to steer at least some people in at least the vaguest direction towards working me out.

Perhaps it is the romantic poet in me, yearning to burst out? I’m not sure, though I do know I’m lost when restrained by the confines of writing blank verse to describe every emotion. I don’t want you to require a fine-toothed comb to extrapolate my meaning when reading this, it should be plain to see, if the prose is somewhat beautiful, all the better.

If I’d have been around at the dawn of radio, I’d have probably been involved with that; when cinema became popular, I’d have gone into film-making; if I had seen the advent the newspaper, or of television, I would have made intelligent articles or programming. But I wasn’t. So I’m not. However, I did see one thing spring up – during my early teens – and begin to capture popular attention in much the same way: the internet. And blogging. So that’s where I am.

And on the internet, there is much creativity around. Go onto YouTube and watch some of the stuff that people are making: intelligent, well thought out and well shot video. But video is not for me. As I said above, I read (therefore I write). I read because of the opportunity it provides. Words are often more evocative than any picture – where a video invites you to watch the people, or action, involved, a book (or piece of writing) invites you to stand right next to the key players. Moreover, with well written stories, you are not just invited to stand shoulder to shoulder with the story-teller, you are invited into his mind, to see the world through his or her eyes. That’s interesting. And that is the art. The art of blogging.

The fact is people are interesting. Every person has an infinite number of choices and decisions, which result in an infinite variety of different lives: every person has an infinite capacity to entertain and enthral us; to appal or enlighten us; to make us cringe or to make us roar with laughter. In reading a person’s story, we’re given the opportunity to see the world through their eyes, albeit for a moment, and that, my friends, is never a waste of time.