Poking around in a blogger’s dusty attic

I have decided that when I become Ruler Of The Entire Known World (Except Venezuela), I shall make the act of writ­ing pon­ti­fic­at­ing, self-important art­icles about blog­ging pun­ish­able by death. Slow, pain­ful, grue­some death — prefer­ably car­ried out by elves armed with lethal cock­tail sticks and small pack­ets of lard.

This evil thought came into my head earlier today when I received a link to this art­icle in my inbox: Linked Out: blog­ging, equal­ity and the future. The email was accom­pan­ied by a com­ment sug­gest­ing that the art­icle might interest me, because I Is A Blog­ger And That.

Now I will freely con­fess (albeit with a heavy heart and no short­age of embar­rass­ment) that there was a time when, yes, such a piece would have enthralled me, cap­tiv­ated me and con­vinced me that we were all pion­eers on the road to the Prom­ised Land of Blog Nir­vana. But now? Well, as is so often the case these days, I found that I had lost the will to live by the end of the second para­graph. I car­ried on read­ing, but then became fas­cin­ated by the plant stand­ing next to my desk. Too many dis­trac­tions from such an entirely tedi­ous piece of text. Oh look, an art­icle about blog­ging. Yawn. Oh, and there’s another art­icle about blog­ging over there. Jib­ber. And strike me down if that isn’t yet another art­icle about blog­ging (and the amaz­ing thing is, it’s not even in The Guard­ian this time). I would be so proud, if only I could keep my eyes open and retain any semb­lance of interest.

In the past couple of years, we’ve been spoon-fed the self-important aggrand­ise­ments of blog­ging as journ­al­ism, blog­ging as diar­ies, blog­ging as com­munity, blog­ging as <insert cul­tural phe­nomenon of your choice here>; yet to my know­ledge, there have never been art­icles on blog­ging as garden­ing, blog­ging as DIY, blog­ging as pop­u­lar TV sit­com or blog­ging as high art.

I think that’s very significant.

Blog­ging — give or take a few vari­ants — is some­body put­ting their own words on a web page. This is not rocket sci­ence, kids. You no longer even need to know that secret web lan­guage of strange acronyms and mis­cel­laneous ampersands that kept it all much more exclus­ive in the Good Old Days. Get over (y)ourselves, we’re really not that import­ant in the gen­eral scheme of things.

And shall I tell you how I know we’re not really that import­ant in the gen­eral scheme of things?

(Say “Yes, Vaughan” — humour me when I’m in a bad mood).

“Yes, Vaughan.”

That’s the right answer. Thank you.

Well — deep breath — we’re not really that import­ant in the gen­eral scheme of things because, if you were to con­duct an instant straw poll of the next thirty people you meet, a sig­ni­fic­ant per­cent­age of them would neither know nor care what a web­log is. They still wouldn’t know what you were talk­ing about if you offered them the shortened form of the word — ‘blog’. They would remain entirely in the dark if you shouted it with gay aban­don whilst jump­ing up and down on one leg in an excited and scar­ily child-like fash­ion: “Blog! Blog! Blog! Blog!” And they def­in­itely wouldn’t know what the bleed­ing hell you were bab­bling on about if you said the word ‘blog’ in a sup­posedly amus­ing for­eign accent — i.e. “ble­urgh”. Try it, and then tell me I’m not right.

And what about if you asked another thirty people — yes, I know I’m mak­ing the assump­tion that you meet a lot of people, but stay with me here — whether they actu­ally main­tain a web­log. Let’s be hon­est, we’re talk­ing responses some­where between blank faces, open-mouthed stares and tumble­weed, aren’t we? Not to men­tion threats of viol­ence if you don’t stop both­er­ing people in the streets by say­ing a funny word and try­ing to gauge their reaction.

(Dis­claimer: I appre­ci­ate that the highly unscientific poll out­lined above would res­ult in excep­tion­ally dif­fer­ent and pos­sibly even hideously deformed fig­ures if every­one you were to meet was either a geek or a blog­ger. Or both. But — hey, call me an old romantic — I have in my mind’s eye the vis­ion of a bust­ling sub­urban street filled with happy chil­dren, bicyc­ling vicars, whist­ling milk­men, skate­board­ing nuns, assor­ted drug addicts and one very con­fused old lady with a shop­ping bag on wheels. Not many of them would be blog­gers, I’d wager).

There was a point to this post, but I seem to have per­man­ently mis­laid it. Believe it or not, I actu­ally star­ted out earlier this even­ing with the inten­tion of writ­ing about some­thing com­pletely dif­fer­ent — some­thing deep and mean­ing­ful and insight­ful. Hey, ana­lyse that, Mr Chin-Stroking Web­log Commentator.

I think what I’m try­ing to say — oh dear, you can tell it’s all going hor­ribly wrong when I need to resort to using a phrase like that — is that the Pro­found Blog­ging Art­icle has now reached a state of melt­down. I’m bored. I’m sure you’re bored too (and don’t dis­agree with me, because I will not accept dis­sent at this point in my ram­bling soli­lo­quy). If you think about blog­ging as no more or no less than someone writ­ing their own words on a web page, it becomes rather less fas­cin­at­ing, doesn’t it? (Mys­ter­i­ously — and annoy­ingly — it also retains an air of fas­cin­a­tion, but in a quite dif­fer­ent way that I won’t talk about now because it spoils the clean lines of my fault­less argu­ment. Get back to me on this one).

Fail­ing that, we could write about trees. Or clouds. Or kit­tens. Or the fact that I’m very tired, slightly hyper, should never have star­ted this post in the first place and will regret it in the morn­ing, and should really set about the task of get­ting some sleep. Now. (Oh, but wait a minute, we can’t write about that, because that would be pro­mot­ing the the­ory of blogs as diar­ies. Damn).

That loud noise you just heard was prob­ably the sound of me shoot­ing myself in the foot. Never mind, I was never too keen on those toes.

You may now pon­ti­fic­ate at your leis­ure, but please do so quietly.