Blogarithms

And so I join the ever increasing numbers. Lemming, I am. Or am I? Adding time to the equation is, as I found out, the only way to tell.

I was curious about what I was about to begin here. I'd never paid attention to many blogs; every now and then I'd peek at a politically slanted blog here, an opinion driven hub of information there, and a few friends' creations, but truthfully I didn't do too much cyber-spelunking. What I found when I started poking around was that it was remarkably easy to weave through a circuit of blogs, continually linking to still more sites of interest, making information (of which I would have previously remained ignorant) readily available. One can imagine the elation felt by a student of history, someone used to the arduous process of seeking out the elusive primary source, suddenly discovering a world where the sole purpose of many of its constituents is to link a viewer further into the information conglomerate, to directly point one within seconds to the origins of posted ideas. Magic!

Excited about this "new" discovery, I needed to learn more about it, and the various constructs that have made blogs a phenomenon of which I had remained largely unaware until now. Overwhelmingly, my search on the topic was met with fairly critical response, be it from a journalist or some corporate head analyzing statistics in his corner office; the sneering opinion of many is that the blog is an empty endeavor, a simplistic human act akin to throwing a penny into a wishing well in the vain hope one's inner voice is heard and somehow answered. And that's on the up-side. The alternative, more cynical view, embodied in an article by George Packer is that a blog is simply a place where the author puts forth,

...little spasms of assertion, usually too brief for an argument ever to stand a chance of developing layers of meaning or ramifying into qualification and complication. There's a constant sense that someone (almost always the blogger) is winning and someone else is losing."

He seems to be frustrated with what he perceives as the underdeveloped, often antagonistic style of what he considers a blog. Of course I would respectfully challenge Mr. Packer's definition as too narrow. Yes, perhaps many blogs are basically sites where people pick apart some of life's minutiae, often falsely implying some kind of personal expertise on a topic. Still others are little more than updates for a specific audience, often friends, about the author's daily encounters, or an outlet for art, poetry, or pictures. However, as an unseasoned observer, it is clear that the accessibility of the blog does make it possible for an interested party to effectively publish a well-thought out statement about anything really, in a way that was not possible before. Perhaps this is why people keep throwing their pennies in; as of April of this year, a market research survey estimates 31.6 million blogs have been created. Perhaps in the face of its critics, this number reflects the inherent optimism driving the blogosphere.

I suppose this number also makes the argument that a blog is essentially useless easy to understand. Who is there to read or care about one voice in thirty-two whopping million? What does one have to say of value? Is there even a shred of originality left to be seized by something so fallible and incongruous as a brain? Be it plaguing self-doubt, or lack of commitment to their original intention, writers drop like flies on a hot sill.

The same powers that be behind the survey mentioned above, the Perseus company, released a more in depth analysis of blogs based on host sites in October of 2003, before as they claim the blogging boom had even really hit. (At this point they estimate there are about 4.12 million blogs being hosted by sites like LiveJournal and Xanga). What they report is humorously enough what I had already found when I clicked through clever titles on Blogger looking for one of my own. Driving Under the Influence & Olde English Bulldogge are perfect examples of what the figures reveal. Approximately 66% of created blogs have been abandoned, just left for dead. Beyond that, 40% of the blogs that had in fact been abandoned, (or looked at slightly differently 26% of the total blogs created), had been one-day endeavors containing a post, singular, if that. Well, at the very least, the odds are on my side that I won't lose faith after a day.

It's the long haul I'm worried about anyway. The average age of the rest of those left to wither, is four months, but some even made it past the three year mark before being left to decay. What's worse is that they figure only about half of a percent of the so-called 'dead' blogs are ever picked up and used again. Looks like if there is any way to be an ethersheep noir, it's here; forget about your blog, then rediscover it, and dedicate yourself to it. Unfortunately too, the number of blogs that have met a dismal end is probably even bleaker than estimated. Some hosting sites actually delete blogs that are inactive after six+ months, and some bloggers go so far as to remove their content from its web space when bringing their blog to a close.

So where are we? Who is left doing the blogging? Is anyone reading them? Is there a point behind all of this written ejaculate that, (if the accepted numbers are to be believed), about 13.2 million (that's roughly 1 in 20, folks!) American adults value enough to try their pe--, er, keypad, at setting forth a unique voice in the swelling cacophony? Do I have any hope of producing anything of worth here?

Well, that last one is the crux. As it turns out the blog, in itself, is really what you make it; it's a virtual design-your-own soapbox, reminiscent of a model kit from a hobby shop. It appears to be just as much an effort of love as any painstaking construction of a Sopwith Camel or an U.S.S. Constellation in a bottle. Only this fashioning of a personal story, or archiving the current times, has the potential to end only when the author meets his, should he persevere and maintain his online canvas. It seems silly not to take advantange of some of the amenities of living in the modern day, doesn't it? Apparently there are some more engaging reasons to be alive now than simply advances in dentistry.

So why not use this privilege made possible by technology, and try your hand at something, anything? In terms of content, it doesn't have to be a 'filter' or a 'journal'. What the individual blog represents can be as unique or bizarre as the mind behind it. At a panel discussion about weblogging and its effect on journalism, Scott Rosenberg, managing editor of Salon, implies infinite possibility when he loosely defines the term 'blogger' as, "...someone who uses a certain kind of tool to publish a certain kind of Web site. The label tells us nothing about how the tool is used or what is published." There is no central voice of the blogging community, no one to demand the towing of a particular 'line' or group interest. There are no limits as to what can be created and made public; there is some semblance of personal freedom here. For some, like Central/South Americans posting on host sites in the US and EU, there is actual freedom in the form of speech--talk about precious and exciting--and all through a blog?!

Since its inception the web has been touted as something that will increase communication spanning even international lines; the blog is a means to this end. I have heard the lament that the world is getting smaller, but byte by byte, blogs are broadcasting facts and commentary that are not necessarily mainstream, or considered for report by any number of media channels with their own agendas, be it for ratings, profit or politic. This is how the world is expanding, through information exchange. Ideas are available for anyone who searches for or stumbles upon them, and for the interested, offer the possibility of understanding the lives of those thousands of miles away. Take for example Barcepundit's October 20th, 22nd, and 30th entries which showcase events on the international scene that got little if any attention in the American media, along with plenty of intelligent commentary. Another useful tact for the blog is exemplified in the March 15th entry in this abandoned blog. Here is a snippet from real life; take whatever insight from it that you will. For once the interpretation of firsthand experience, (there's that primary source again), is yours. Furthermore, keep poking around and you are virtually guaranteed to learn something new or different; according to the Perseus survey, while 80.8% of blogs link to another site from their homepage, only about 9.9% link to one of almost three thousand traditional news agencies, (a list compiled via Google News sources).

When we start to look more closely at who is doing the blogging, the demographic breakdown gets a little fuzzy depending on the consulting firm performing the analysis. For example, interpreting the Perseus numbers, (56% of blogs created by females, 51.5% created by those in the 13-19 age range), The Blogging Iceberg report states,

...the typical blog is written by a teenage girl who uses it twice a month to update her friends and classmates on happenings in her life. It will be written very informally... blogging is a social phenomenon: persistent messaging for young adults."

Perhaps this assertion is supported by the incorporation of a blogging feature into social networking sites like Friendster and MySpace, however I feel this description fails to encompass what blogs have been able to achieve. Ironically, Jeffrey Henning, (Subway spokesperson Jared look-alike and flat author of the above report), doesn't do very well at blogging about blogs, perhaps due to his inability to think of the creative ways to use his space.

It is important to note that another research group finds alternatively that the gender distribution holds true in terms of percentages, but flipped, claiming men are actually more apt to create a blog, with 58% of authors being male. I am not so sure that "who" is writing them is a telling sign of how a blog is used, or to what end, except maybe in terms of age, where content is more likely (but not necessarily going) to be mature or thoughtful if a person is, say, out of their teenage years. The statistics certainly get a bit muddled when consulting the various resources available on the topic however, there is one thing about which they all agree. There is an audience; people are reading, and in large numbers.

The most recent research I could find on the topic was published in the form of a press release by the folks at the Pew Internet and American Life Project, a follow-up to their definitive 2004 study, "The State of Blogging". They report that 16% of adults (roughly 1 in 6) in the U.S. claim to have read one or more web logs. Offering some perspective, they point out this portion of the population is equivalent in size to 20% of daily newspaper readers and 40% of the talk radio audience. Clearly big-time marketeers are stopping to take note, no doubt lulling themselves to sleep at night with visions of advertising to an exponentially expanding community, and turning it into a trading post.

Fueling these hopes that blog readership can be manipulated into marketing success is the fact that, as discussed by the PIALP, the majority of American adults are technologically unaware; that is to say, 62% do not know what a blog is... yet. If advertisers could find a way to tap the blog en masse for what it is worth to them, they could look forward to a steadily increasing viewing audience for the foreseeable future. This translates into a potentially swelling consumer base. Good luck to them however as it will be no easy task to accomplish. Part of the success of the blog has relied on its personal honesty, and to begin to promote a product or cause for profit would probably cause a loss of credibility within this community of writers.

So how did it happen that while most Americans are still in the dark, the blog has taken root in the very soil of our society? In 2003 the Oxford English Dictionary saw fit to log it in the annals of our lexicon, along with terms like 'studmuffin', 'dragon lady', 'clocker', 'transgender', 'bass-ackwards' and the language shaping 'arse-licker'. After all, everyone knows an arse-licker! (For these and other additions to our language, look at the Out-of-Sequence entries, and see why, on the whole, society is not producing any future Shakespeares.) A year later, Merriam Webster voted 'blog' their Word of the Year further pointing to the concept's successful establishment. It is because of little facts like these that I find myself compelled to argue with an Australian internet research company that states, "the blog phenomenon has peaked and ... most blogs will soon be stored in the part of cyberspace dedicated to hula hoops, pogo sticks and other fashions that reached their use-by date." In fact, I think quite the opposite is true. The times, they are a-changin' maybe?

Well, let's look at this logically. Some bloggers have appeared in other forms of media, like radio and tv, and perhaps more telling, many celebs have made a crossover to becoming bloggers themselves. A notable example would be Chris Matthews' HardBlogger, perhaps an attempt to compensate for the waning interest in television news. At least slant is welcome in a blog, where a writer's disposition is also his hallmark.

What else have they accomplished besides being picked up on by the trendy Hollywood crowd you ask? Well, for starters blogs played a central role in Trent Lott's resignation and the apology elicited from Dan Rather. In both cases, blogs vehemently drove the media spotlight onto the issue and riled people up until something had to give. The search for the truth is often taken very personally. Interestingly, the blog has also been known to get people fired for talking about work, or in one case posing (pin-up style) in work clothes, so be careful what you blog about. Don't think for a second Big Brother isn't touring the Great Blog Flats right along with you. Alternatively, I would also advise being careful what you say and do to people who regularly post about their own lives; in May of this year a young man named his murderer in the last entry of his blog. Each use of the web log though vastly different has yet still had a profound effect on the authors or the subjects on which they focused.

More often, I get the sense that for those who engage in blogging regularly, it becomes a way to satisfy the need to produce. In addition it offers a person the time to sit down and dissect the barrage of information, premises and ad campaigns we are pummeled with daily. Rebecca Blood, one of the earliest bloggers, writes in her essay about the subject's history that,

...As corporate interests exert tighter and tighter control over information and even art, critical evaluation is more essential than ever. As advertisements creep onto banana peels, attach themselves to paper cup sleeves, and interrupt our ATM transactions, we urgently need to cultivate forms of self-expression in order to counteract our self-defensive numbness and remember what it is to be human."

What are we if not creatures with a predisposition for higher thinking? What are we if we never stop to use this capability, if we just wade through life's morass of mixed messages and accept whatever comes our way-- a veritable Kentucky-fried, magically delicious, steaming hot cup of bullsh*t?

I ask this rhetorically of course as I am of the persuasion who thinks the most powerfully defining characteristic of humanity is our individual ability to use higher thought processes. Beyond our reason, we are little more than a series of desires expressed by any number of animals--eating, sleeping, fucking, providing for material needs. Too often we submit to these impulses and find ourselves batted about by the pressures exerted by society's constantly spinning axis. This whirligig can be downright nauseating when swallowed day after day without question--I for one need a break in the ride, so here I am, biding my time on the amusement park line, thinking about what it is I'm doing here.

So I'm not taking on the blog in hopes that I'm going to become famous, or suddenly start blogging for dollars. I feel like I've been handed a tremendous opportunity and it would be a bloomin' shame if I said no to something so innocent and full of possibility. Who knows what will come of it; the only rule I am imposing on myself is an utter lack of limitation. To define myself in any number of narrow ways would be a mistake. To attempt to always make my thoughts short, sweet and generally palatable as a friend once remarked when discouraged about the readership of his own blog, would be an act of short-changing. There are some things that beg for explanation, in depth discussion, and I fully intend to use this space to essay into the realm of the boring-to-most. It doesn't matter if it finds itself read, just that it is written, honestly and well. It is only important that I am tossing in my two cents, that my voice is pinging through space, and I am not shying away.