In praise of uncategorizable blogs
Kevin Drum went to BlogHer, and didn’t have much interesting to say about it. But the discussion in the comments section is worth reading. Bitch, PhD posted several times on how "non-political blogs" often talk about the ways that politics affect real people’s lives. I’ve argued before that personal blogs may even have more influence than political blogs, because they reach people outside the echo chamber.
Someone named Nancy wrote:
"As long as people like you [Drum] define what the mainstream political topics are, anything women are interested in becomes, by definition, off-topic. Further, writing about political topics with a subjective voice has always been defined as "personal" even when it concerns a mainstream political topic. Part of the point of inclusiveness is widening the definition of political topics to include those that concern women and widening the voice of journalism to include the more subjective, personal language women sometimes use and like to read."
And someone named Maynard Handley wrote:
"bhpd, I am well familiar with your sort of blog, or, for example, profgrrl. And I don’t read them. Why? Because I’m a busy guy who isn’t interested in learning about other people’s private life. There are PLENTY of blogs out there. Why waste time on those that dilute their content with material of no interest to me?"
Differences in taste make the world go around. I get bored by blogs that cover the same topics all the time. Very few people have enough interesting things to say about politics (or about knitting or anything else) to be worth reading day in and day out on that one subject. But a lot more people can say something interesting about each of five different subjects in the course of a week.
Lisa Williams wrote it more eloquently than I can manage:
"Blogs give you an opportunity to challenge this limited idea of what is important and to say, The rest of my life is important too. I am not a brain in a jar that emits 700 word screeds. I have a family and I have interests and I have favorite foods and a dog, and I am going to place these on the same web page as my essay about Kierkegaard and my instructions for how to crack open the case of my X Box, because that is a more truthful and honest representation of my life, and because I trust and respect other people to appreciate me as a person and not as a narrow pipe spewing bits on a narrow subject… I also suspect that the general tendency of bloggers towards including personal commentary and “off topic” adventures makes the blogosphere a more polite place than either the mass media or Usenet."
Lisa later wrote another post about work blogs, acknowledging the need to sometimes keep things compartmentalized. This issue also has been discussed at length in the wake of BlogHer.
So, continue to expect a little bit of everything here at Half Changed World.
August 12th, 2005 at 11:49 pm
I’ve kept a personal blog/journal since 2001. Since I’m passionate about politics and volunteer for campaigns I do write about issues and candidates. I also don’t make any attempts to hide my political leanings. I’ve gotten some pretty harsh feedback about my entries concerning politics, mostly that I shouldn’t be including them in a personal blog. Amazingly enough there are people out in Internetland who feel it’s their job to tell me what I can and can’t write about in my own darn blog!
I don’t read many political blogs either, unless they’re linked from a blog that I do read. All the best content from strictly political blogs gets to me eventually through the blogs that I do read anyway. I also know some of my own readers will skip right from my politics posts to my cat posts and vice versa.
August 13th, 2005 at 8:53 am
I, too, like blogs with more variety. All politics all the time drives me crazy. It’s weird how these things get gendered. I also think it would be good for people to realize that life isn’t always compartmentalized. Personal life slips into work/political life and vice versa.
August 13th, 2005 at 10:45 am
I’m with you and the rest of the commenters here. I think the idea the politics is interwoven in our daily lives is a good thing to support. Most political bloggers want people to be more interested in politics, not less. Doesn’t it therefore make sense to make the personal political (to steal a phrase)? Or to help people link their daily struggles to the larger picture?
August 14th, 2005 at 10:48 am
Thanks for writing this. I’ve found, in my own life and work, that trying to keep the personal and the professional strictly compartmentalized carries its own set of risks and stresses.
Also, in my blog Contentious, I’m offering an informal survey that explores people’s reactions to professional blogs that occasionally mention personal information. (Not about changing the whole theme from professional to personal, just mentioning personal stuff in a professional/business setting.) The reactions are fascinating. I invite you and your readers to take my survey.
Thanks,
– Amy Gahran
Editor, CONTENTIOUS
August 15th, 2005 at 7:37 am
Thanks for writing this. I’ve been having a bit of a blog crisis of conscience lately over my lack of “focus” at Beanie Baby–I Don’t Have a Theme! Except Frances.
August 19th, 2005 at 5:10 pm
I agree with you about personal blogs, and mixy-uppy uncategorizable blogs.
Amy’s survey over at Contentious was very simple, but made me think hard about patterns of paying attention and the formation of networks. It was the question something like, “Would the lack of personal detail make you stop reading a blog?” And I thought about this and realized that I hadn’t believed it was so, but… in practice, what do I read every day? The newspaper? Not anymore. Magazines? No, not really; it’s all gone to blogs. Knowing the person behind the writing, at least some version of that person, and developing social trust might be more important to me than I thought.