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HERE THEN IS a rough and incomplete typology of blogs I have perused, often against my better judgment, in an effort to understand the phenomenon. Old Media's primary question about blogs seems to be "Why are all these people blogging?"; to answer the question we should first ask what everyone is blogging about. The genres described here are not rigid; most blogs evince traits of more than one during their lifetimes. A better journalist would link to examples, but I fear some authors may see themselves in this typology and begin to cry. Which will likely wind up in a blog entry, compounding the problem. So here then are some unsupported generalizations, with one last caveat: I've given the genres genders to avoid writing 'he or she' and 'him or her,' but the sex is not absolute. There are many female Bloggers Jr., in other words, and male Fairy Princesses abound. • • • blogger jr. | fairy princess | blah | steel magnolias | infrequently updated B L O G G E R | J R . Among the least worrisome occupants of Blogistan is Blogger Jr., an earnest youngster who links to and comments on various news-of-note stories in the manner of his adult blogger heroes. As with adults, Blogger Jr. sites often reek of one ideology or another, and hence may be written only by those who care about the outside world. That isn't necessarily a good thing, by the way; the tone here is often similar to the Onion's faux op-ed "Why Doesn't Somebody Do Something About All of the Problems?", and its perspective is about as fresh. Blogger Jr. is basically talk radio for the Web, which may help explain his prevailing conservatism. T H E | F A I R Y | P R I N C E S S | B L O G . Less compelling is the Fairy Princess Blog, typically written by the sort of person who sketches dolphins while listening to Tori Amos. Life is a difficult but ultimately beautiful thing to the Fairy Princess, who wonders aloud whether she will ever find true happiness in between news of her weekend plans and something funny the cat did. While her wide-eyed optimism can be refreshing, I find that Fairy Princesses are the most likely of the genres described here to commmit the medium's cardinal sin, namely posting an entry consisting entirely of song lyrics. You will understand the horror I experienced recently when I came across a post that printed in their entirety the words to a song by Vertical Horizon. [ Laughter, applause. ] T H E | B L A H | B L O G . Some bloggers are incredibly devoted to their craft despite not having a damn thing to say, and fill cyberspace with pages and pages of nothing in particular. Look hard enough and you'll find some nominal topic of conversation — say, the transcript of an allegedly humorous discussion recently had via Instant Messenger — but often the Blah blogger compensates for the dearth of activity in his real life by discussing at length the details of his fake one: the virtual life, in other words, of the blog. Hence Blahs frequently apologize for not posting more often, discuss the software they use to post, talk about their hit count, wonder who's reading their site, etc. An easy way to identify this is to count the entries that mention the blog itself in any monthlong period and then divide by the total number of entries. If the Minutiae Index is above 0.3, you have found yourself within the boring, blog-centric universe of the unrepentant dullard. T H E | S T E E L | M A G N O L I A S | B L O G . The unfortunate byproduct of the notion that you'll feel better if you write it down, Steel Magnolias bust out Grade-A psychodrama day after day, from dying relatives and uncaring friends to love lost, found and lost again. Typically at least one of the blog's featured players has a crippling disability, life-threatening disease or both; everyone here is on antidepressants. Sex and drugs feature heavily, so typically Steel Magnolias omit their last names or post under pseudonyms. These blogs can be fun for a few days, but as with any other kind of rubbernecking, the voyeuristic thrill soon wears thin. You're left with the rather pathetic specter of the blogger, alone in a darkened room, sending out poorly worded missives into the unblinking void. I N F R E Q U E N T L Y | U P D A T E D | B L O G . The ease with which anyone may begin blogging has given rise to a glut of wannabloggers who post with frustrating irregularity. The Infrequent Updater sees maintaining a blog as an eminently worthy pasttime, like riding his exercise bike. But like his exercise bike, his blog has sat gathering dust in the basement for the better part of a year. Most won't mind that some random blogger hasn't posted lately; after all, it isn't as if any day now he'll reveal the secret formula for Coke or the outcome of the season-ending cliffhanger on "Moesha." Nonetheless, those who find themselves strangely engrossed in the narrative of someone else's life grow agitated when a beloved blog goes un-updated. • • • PEOPLE BLOG, THEN, for a variety of reasons, most of which have something to do with it being a cheap source of personal validation. In that sense it's quite similar to the diary or journal, phenomena that have existed in their basic forms since people first made cave paintings to describe their daily lives. Consider this translation of a scrawling by Grunk, a Neanderthal shepherd living in what is now Europe about 30,000 years ago. Often considered the father of bloggery, Grunk's early dispatch addresses timeless, universal themes that still are poignant today. 3.02.30,000
B.C. | Woolly
mammoth smash hut. Grunk angry! Grunk scream! Boy try smash woolly
mammoth. Woolly mammoth smash boy. Grunk sad! Grunk cry. Granted: You have to sift through a lot of Fairy Princesses to find a single Grunk. For every gripping entry about a son's death at the hands of a woolly mammoth are millions more by individuals whose biggest problem in life is getting Blogger to work. Copeland's aforementioned litany of criticisms, in other words, rings true: Blogs are insular, trivial, self-obsessed, incoherent, bad. And yet. For all their trespasses against the human condition, every now and again a good post makes my day. For the voracious reader, blogs are popcorn — a fun snack between meals. Whatever their genre, most consist of personal stories, and one shouldn't underestimate the force of a small anecdote told well. Minutiae gets a bad rap, but because it makes up the majority of our lives it can't be dismissed altogether. Blogging well is about packaging minutiae in an interesting and accessible way, finding the universal in the specific, the specific in the universal. Blogging well is about making good popcorn. |