the future of blogging

Author: Tiara Rea

So I’ve been reading more blogs than I ever have in my life recently. And as I was trolling through blog #5gazillion-and-one, I realized something – everybody. effing. blogs.

Not just “everybody” like a ten-year-old girl says “everybody thinks I’m popular!” but literally every corporate website, every 2.0 site, every trendy, right-on-the-edge site has a link to the company blog or the blog of the owner of the company. I found that extremely, well, sad.

I started blogging when I was sixteen, and back then, it was underground. I got myself a DeadJournal (feel free to oooo and aaah) and thought I was so damn cool with all my morbid, “zomg like I’m all alone in this crazy teenaged world!” entries. Actually, they were more like, “I love Hanson, I love writing, I’m gonna be a Broadway composer when I grow up!” (Yes, Tiara had high ambitions.) But the point is that blogging was kind of new, kind of dangerous (what if someone you KNOW saw it?), and it was extremely exciting. I got a thrill seeing people actually comment on what I was writing, and it was like a drug. I posted at least once a day, drew a fanbase, and watched my comment box fill. Those were the days that when people saw a great blog, they said something about it (a lot of blogs on the Live/dead/greatestjournal circuit are comment-less now; the main reason I don’t blog there anymore).

Sadly, I feel the popularity of blogging has made it feel more ‘generic’ to me. I expect to see a blog on every site now, and worse, if there isn’t one, I’m thinking, “wtf, this site sucks!”

But on the upside, I know a good blog when I see it, and there are a bunch out there, just waiting to be discovered. While the popularity of blogging really ticks me off on some emotional-indie level, the content of the blogs have gotten better. Much better. I don’t find all the sappy, whiney, stupid woes of a 10-year-old girl talking about Britney Spears – I find content. Actual, well-thought-out, thought-provoking content!

Though I miss the old ‘danger’ of blogging, I’m really excited about the future of this strange textual world.

I think every post I write is going to have the world “text” in it somehow…