Some Bloggish Observations

Am I Wrong?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's possible that no blogger has more than a few non-bloggers in his audience. Nearly everyone who leaves comments in my blog is a blogger. Each time I become familiar with comments in other blogs, the same appears to be true—nothing but bloggers talking to one another. That isn't a bad thing, but it is curious. It may mean that blogs are very intensely participatory and do not otherwise prosper. Those who aren't interested enough to start a blog also aren't interested or bold enough to keep reading them for very long or making comments. That's just some conjecture on my part; I'm sure there are probably exceptions. I try to sample as many blogs as possible each week and nothing yet has suggested that I'm in a narrow part of The Blog World—nothing yet has disproven my blogger-only theory.

Self-Conscious

Some Bloggers (me) almost immediately become self-conscious, thus they talk about blogs and examine the writing process and templates and other coding more than write the blog posts or examine other subjects of interest. A lot of Bloggers, like me, act like some criminal trapped in one of those police interview rooms with a one-way mirror. People are staring in at us, we know that and we begin to fidget and to wonder WHO is out there! We are nervous and we want to go over and peek back through the mirror at them, but we know we can't see through it! Thus you get maniacs of all sorts, some subtle, some crazed prowlers like me—we all want some feedback!

Diary With Statements About Public And Private Issues

Quite a lot of these blogs that I see could be called "diaries with statements about the largest of public policy issues and the smallest of private dung heaps." Though not often called so, I guess "The Rat Squeaks", too, is a sort of Diary in which I talk to myself, confess things in my own and other people's voices, fall into trances, perform tirades, dance sideways and backwards, boogie naked and upside-down till the cows come home, smear boogers on the walls or under the armchairs, pander to total strangers, and wonder where all my old friends went. Not many followed me to Blogland—I probably stepped on their faces, their fingers, their pride, or something. Maybe they have the lack of patience with blogs that I have with other things. It's always something.

Here on the Internet, I have a constant new inflow of people to annoy. As time goes by, I find I can irritate, alienate, or scorch a man or woman wearing asbestos clothing at a hundred paces. I'm never aware of it until it's already happened. Once it's happened, I wonder how I could possibly not have seen it coming! I'm either very stupid or very insensitive. Neither characterization is complimentary to me, is it? But I'll go on for a while nonetheless.

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"I wonder what the hell he means by that?" Pollyanna Piphany

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