On Blogs

Fashion/Personal Style Blogger, Tavi Gevinson, who achieved fame/notoriety/acclaim/derision 

for her blog http://www.thestylerookie.com/ in 2008 at Age 11. 

When I was sixteen - so in 2007 - my English teacher encouraged (read: it was compulsory) the entire class to write and submit a short story for the Young Writer Of The Year competition. The idea, I assume, was to enable us to think creatively (as is often the point) and develop a compendium of short narratives to have at our disposal for future assessments - ones which might be easily adaptable to a stimulus text in an English exam (was it Paper 1 or Paper 2?) - say, an image of an overgrown path winding through a black forest or a quote about overcoming adversity pulled straight from a motivational poster illustrated by a victorious one-legged seagull, potato chip hanging flaccidly from the vice-like grip of its fluorescent orange beak. The exercise, admittedly like most other forms of exercise I participate in, was left to the last minute and executed without as much as a drop of perspiration (this is blatantly untrue, I am a semi-regular jogger and one time Bikram Yoga enthusiast, which, in case you are unfamiliar, involves a previously unprecedented amount of sweating through a series of twenty-six postures over ninety minutes in a forty degree room).

I promise this is going somewhere.

To continue: I (for reasons unknown to me today) decided to write one thousand words from the perspective, and in the format of, a highly neurotic (and unlikeable) blogger who suffers from a crippling case of agoraphobia, and consequently, is only able to engage with the world beyond his window via the internet. Not a lot happened (I was – and still kinda am -  really into contemporary short fiction, in which not a lot happens), which could be attributed to my writing about exactly what I saw outside my own window and what I had experienced during my own day. Essentially, I was blogging by means of this take-home assignment. They (the gender non-specific protagonist) ate eggs for breakfast that day, and so did I. They didn’t care much for the overpowering flavor of bergamot in Earl Grey tea, and so did I (although I am a reformed Earl Grey enthusiast today). They had a passionate dislike for Kyle and Jackie O, and – you guessed it. Etcetera. Although a conflict or sorts arose when they awoke one morning to find their eggs cold and their mother dead under suspicious circumstances. Consequently, by virtue of their condition, they were unable, or at least not immediately compelled to, phone the relevant authorities for fear of having to ‘go downtown’ and leave the house – so instead, they blogged about it. End one thousand words, change the font, add an emoticon relevant to the format of social media blogging at the time (Hello, MySpace ;) ), spell-check, print.

The whole point of this spiel is to highlight that at this point, I was one of the very few people in my class of twenty-something something-teens who actually knew what a blog was. To this day, I’m sure a few of them might still be hesitant to describe one to you. Besides the vaguely onomatopoeic and unappealing name (it’s too close a relative to ‘blob’, ‘blot’ and ‘bloat’ – that, and my dictionary widget recommends you pronounce it bläg) which to my mind conjures portly, disheveled and stain-covered over-opinionated twenty-something’s mouthing off about topics considered dinner-party conversational taboos. I still feel like the overarching perception of blogs in general is that they are a maybe a little bit self-indulgent, narcissistic (that word gets thrown around a lot where blogs are concerned) and a conversational taboo of themselves. Again, my most reliable source of general knowledge ever, my dictionary widget, follows up on its entry on ‘blog’ with the example, ‘Most of his work colleagues were unaware of his blog until recently.’ Is it not just a little bit telling that our fictive exemplary blogger is perhaps so shamed of his pastime that he has been unable to share it with his work colleagues, like taxidermy or competitive line dancing, until now?  No? Just me?

‘Later that day I got to thinking…

(Thanks, Carrie Bradshaw – who would surely have a blog today had she actually been computer literature, let alone a three-dimensional character who could actually type despite the impediment caused by her having horse hooves – too much?)

… I couldn’t help but wonder’: is ‘blog’ still a dirty word? Maybe I’m reading too far into this, but lately people have seemed to wince in the split second before they pronounce the word; almost as if there is some electrical current which short-circuits somewhere between the brain and the tongue, as if a small man wearing denim overalls inside our brains sticks a fork into a power socket in that split second, looking up and asking us ‘are you sure you want to say this?’ and causing us to grimace and jerk involuntarily. Look out for it, especially from me.

Then again, maybe it isn’t - a dirty word, that is. Perhaps, outside of this realm of academic necessity, there is nothing at all wrong with freely and openly publishing one’s thoughts and opinions on the minutiae of everyday life and everything in between; offering their (presumably non-existent – not everyone can amass a following) readership a taste of what they too ate for breakfast that day, what they’re doing now, or what they wish they were doing instead. But then again, maybe there is - begging us to ask (and answer for ourselves) the age old question: who gives a… Not all bloggers and their blogs are bad though. In fact, these days, it would seem that a blog is now a valid platform from which to launch a successful career as a writer, a photographer, a journalist or just a talking head. We've come a long way since that English class in 2007...

But, then again, who isn’t a blogger these days? Every time one of my ‘friends’ posts something on Facebook, or Twitter, about their failed relationship or the state of their hangover, I die a thousand deaths, and concede that these updates are really just abridged versions of the blogs I read when I should be doing other things, albeit with less style, substance and aesthetic pleasure and taste. And to that list, now I can add: things I write when I should be doing other things, which is exactly what I'm doing now. I guess that would make be a hypocritical blogger, or, and this a hypblograsy. However, as so articulately put by one of our peers: I’m only doing this because I have to. At least that offers me some comfort.