Possumblog

Well, now, if it’s not time once more for The Day-Before-Friday Three!

Today, since I have to get all practiced up for representing the ‘Stupid-Pointless’ branch of bloggerdom in front of a bunch of computer guys, I thought it might be good to do a little introspection to help me get my thoughts together about the topic. In doing so, I figured you could play along as well.

TO THAT END, we now present this week’s Axis of Weevil Thursday Three--Deeply Ponderful Edition!

Now then, answer the following questions either in your own blog and leave a link in the comments below, or use the comments as your substitute blog in case you don’t have one. As usual, anyone is welcome to play along.

SO--

1) If you have a blog, why did you start it? If you don’t have one, do you think you might start one? Why or why not?

2) What blogs do you read most often?

3) Finally, what do you consider to be the greatest strength(s) and most profound weakness(es) of blogging?

Okay, folks--go forth and cogitate, and tell us what you think.

As for my answers--

1) I started this blog mainly as a way to have an outlet for my thoughts. Simple as that. I enjoy writing, and it was easy to start, and it gave me a way to keep my thoughts ordered and give some structure to the tremendous emotions I felt after September 11. Like so many blogs, I consider this to be a product of that event, even though it was three months afterwards that I started it.

And I like having people read what I write--I don’t do this just for myself, which explains why it’s a public, rather than a private, journal. Maintaining it in the years since I started has been occasionally laborious, but rewarding nonetheless. And as always, I truly do appreciate everyone who has come by over the years, and especially those who have hung around long enough to become my friends.

2) Probably Instapundit and Outside the Beltway--I read just about everyone in the blogroll on most days, but I check these two several times during the day to see what all’s going on.

3) Strengths--immediacy, and the ability to find SOMEone, SOMEwhere, who is an expert on just about any subject. Those two things, when combined with a wide-ranging network of concerned people, create a very powerful information tool.

Weakness--rampant cretinism. When blogging as a means of information exchange was first coming into its own back in 2001, it was much harder to find the slack-jawed wingnut spit-slingers who tended to populate the LAST big thing, Internet forums. It was certainly nice to step out of the troll heavy, sock-puppet infested, flamewar environment--at least for the few months before they all figured out they could be just as stupid, fatuous, illogical, and fallacious in people’s comment sections, or in their own blogs. And they continue to spread, in direct proportion to their numbers in society at large. The only trouble is, they tend to be able to be much more prolific, in that the general population has to work for a living, and the Idiot Class is hardcore unemployable. Except as members of rent-a-protestor mobs.

But the strength of good information--if it is freely available--tends to drown out the less reliable (although screechier and sometimes more numerous) voices of the tinfoil hat crowd. (And yes, the part about "freely available" is a direct shot at anyone who thinks the UN should have control of the Internet.)

So, there you go.

Posted by Terry Oglesby at November 3, 2005 07:51 AM