I’m pretty new to the pathetic self-centered world of the bloggosphere. There are a few classes of blogs. Let’s break out some html.
- Link-harvesters, people that spend all day looking for links of a certain type. Slashdot was one of the first of these, although it has a little original content (interviews). Fark is another, this has no original content whatsoever.
- Pundits, who find links, post them, and then provide commentary. See Tom Tomorrow, Instapundit, and others.
- Original content, where people actually post original work/thoughts/pictures/writings. These range from:
- E/N Drama, or people that post useless angsty shit, and
- Good sites (like mine of course) where people post beautiful essays, photos, etc. Try Hunkbutta (a travelogue) or Buffoonery.
99% of blogs are livejournal E/N drama pieces of shit. This makes sense, because it’s very easy to update a site that’s about you. Teenagers are the primary authors of these sites because all their friends will read their site, their parents won’t, they loooove themselves and they have lots of freetime.
Like anything else, a way has been found to use stupid blogs to form cliques. I give you the Nonuglies, a collection of livejournal users who choose who is pretty enough to be included among them. As an ugly nerd who now writes his own blog that is straying dangerously toward E/N crap, I react two ways: 1), that’s sort of sick and mean, and 2) who the fuck cares.
I don’t see this as the end of civilization or really anything new. I refuse to say “kids these days” or whatever. Assholes will be assholes at any age. Just because there’s a new, public medium for assholes to flaunt their assholeness doesn’t mean anything has changed. Put it this way, they can have their space, and I will have mine. The internet is a huge place, and it’s very easy to not even know about sprawling subcommunities until someone clues you in. Like Blogs.
Ah yes, did I mention there’s a link harvesting site that tracks crappy blog drama? There’s a niche for everyone I guess.
