I have a lot more offline friends blogging now, which I guess is a natural progression of how the Internet is developing. Anyone can be a blogger, even if it’s just on a WordPress.com or Blogger account. The plus side is that it’s becoming more accepted, it’s not a ‘geek thing’ the way it was ten years ago. Blogging is a lot more mainstream, and a lot easier for people to now pick up – in much the same way that programming used to be insanely complicated and time-consuming and is now much easier for your average Joe. All very obvious.
The unexpected minus side is that now I’m faced with a surprising amount of super-pretentious blogs. I don’t know why this is, but personal blogs often seem to offer an unforeseen and unpredictable side of people you knew offline first. Some really lovely people seem to suddenly develop a blogging style that makes me give up after the first sentence. It’s like wading through treacle – you can understand what they’re saying, but it’s a lot of effort to get there and little reward when you do.
I’ve always been a fan of simple free-typing when it comes to blogging. I type out almost exactly what’s in my head, and I only really make changes in terms of word order. I’m guessing this is fairly obvious because my good friend Tom once mentioned that my blog reads like a stream of consciousness… I’m not suggesting that everyone does that, but there’s no need to swallow a thesaurus either. Or agonise over every sentence. You wouldn’t write like that in your diary (remember when blogs were like diaries?!), so there’s no need to go all-out to impress. I guess people have different views on that, but it’s not an essay for an academic journal. Just be yourself.
Although part of me is amused by these blogs, part of me is sad. Because I’m nosey, and because I know a lot of these people have more to give; instead, they’re just hiding behind a ton of complicated words with very little meaning. I know that quite a bit of what I post can easily be interpreted as banal (yes, there’s a ‘b’ at the front) – here’s a picture of my dog, this is what I did at the weekend, etc. That’s not everyone’s cup of tea, and I’m sure there’s a great niche for people who want to ramble metaphorically about the universe. I just ramble about whatever comes to mind. It’s a way to clear my thoughts and my head, and record my life to amuse my older and wiser self in years to come.
The people who do get it right (based on my personal appreciation, not on my own writing) make up for it though. I’ve come across some really interesting blogs to follow from friends who’ve carved out their own little niches in areas I’d never even thought about. I’m a bit jealous, because I’m still trying to figure out where to go with my own blog. But I’m also happy that in 2010, there are new bloggers who can jump straight in with tone and content that match what the community has been about for the past seven or eight years.
Do you have any offline friends who blog? What do you think of their blogs? Which blogging style(s) do you prefer?
*waves* Hi, I'm 
I agree with you about blogs and how it’s nice that it’s just a stream of your thoughts. That’s how my blogs are. I don’t like those blogs that are so metaphorical that you don’t understand what they’re trying to say. I’ve only seen about a handful of blogs from offline people. I think half are metaphores and the others are like our’s. I like blogs that are like ours, instead of having to read some blog and not understand what they’re trying to say because they use complicated words, etc.
I have only one friend offline that blogs. lol. And I love her blog. But she rarely posts. I’m slowing down a bit too. I think I’ll pick it up more in the winter. But you are absolutely right. I write like I talk. No big words. And lots of….. dots….and bad punctuation, lol.
I don’t have any offline friends who blog, and I like it that way. No one offline knows the URL to my blog, though one or two people know OF it. I don’t like giving them the link though (even though if you just google my name + a few of my friends name, then put blog after.. my site comes up first so it’s easy to figure out
) because it’s just personal. I don’t care that people I don’t know offline read it, because it’s just.. not the same, haha.
& thanks
i love the colour too, hehe.
I know what you mean. I have a few friends offline who blog as well, but a few of us have been doing so since years ago. One of my friends just goes all out as well, and it’s pretty obvious with all her emoticons and expressions of anger and happiness.
I do agree that blogging has become more mainstream but I also think that people shouldn’t feel the need to impress others with their writing. It is after all, a log that is updated daily (or less often if you will). I know some people who formulate their blogs so much, down to every little emoticon. One person even told me that she takes hours or even up to a day to write a blog post because she can’t even decide what emoticon goes at the end of a sentence. O_O; It’s a bit extreme.
I actually introduced a few of my offline friends to blogging, but I always stress that it’s their blog and they can write how they like. ^_^
I agree. I know this person (I wouldn’t say we are friends but yea) and let’s just say that she’s the kind of person that you wouldn’t expect to be writing in perfect english with boombastic words in her writings but surprisingly that’s what her blog consists of. I don’t know why but it feels like she’s a different person when she’s writing.
I occasionally write my blogs about my deeper feeling but I choose to write it in my Livejournal that is locked (only seen by a few friends) because I dont want my offline friends to find out. But that’s just me (: My public blogs are more of my thoughts that I wanna share and discuss with the world.
Also, this is off topic but how much did you purchase your .nu for? I’m planning to get one at a good price (if I can find). And I’m glad you like the scans I posted ((:
This is a good blog. Keep up all the work. I too love blogging and expressing my opinions. Thanks
I can’t help but edit and revise as I blog, because 1) Firefox has an automatic spell checker, and 2) I was an editor for the school newspaper and yearbook in high school. I mainly like to make sure my ideas flow (somewhat) smoothly; however, it bothers me if a word gets used so many times in such a short tidbit of words.
As for offline blogging friends, none of those exist for me yet.
None of my offline friends blog they’re not interested nor are any of them into the whole online scene like that. Although, I do think this guy I worked with blogs, but it’s mainly for his comics that he does.
I like all different style of blogs, but I prefer not to know every detail of someones day, those type of blogs are really hard to read and I often find myself skimming those types of blogs, sadly. I like each blog to have an introductory, main blog topic, subtopics, and a conclusion. I hate when they’re scattered and all over the place with 5 different subjects.
If my blog title is a movie, then you better believe my entire blog is going to relate to that movie and if I have anything extra to say more than likely I will do it in another blog or if it’s something small and only like a sentence I may add it at the very end.
I love intelligent blogs that make you think and I love on topic blogs like I said that have a main topic.
Nope, I don’t have any offline friends that blog and you must really not enjoy my blogs cause they’re usually updates on my life. =POf course if I have something else to talk about – such as how I feel on a certain topic or whatever I’ll definately speel about it but for the most part it’s just about my life and I. But like you said, everyone has their own little thing they like to do with the little space they own on the web, so why not let them do it!
I hope you discover what you’d like to get into, but again like you said – just be yourself and it’ll come to you!
Take care xx
Hey Jenni ((: I hope you’re having a good week! Anyways, regarding to your comment on my blog. I hate deciding where to eat especially when I’m out with friends because there will be more of us. And more of us don’t know where to eat. In the end we’ll eat up eating like mcdonald’s or something lol. which is sad.
I also just write what is in my head. I think trying to make it sound all professional and proper would take the fun out of writing. I just want to write to let people know what is going on in my life and things that I enjoy.
I don’t really read blogs of people I know. The only person I follow is my sister-in-law because she writes about my nephews and there are stories that I sometime don’t hear about because I no longer live at home. But her blog does annoy me sometimes. She doesn’t care what other people think about her and will sometimes write things that I find rude concerning my family and friends. One of her posts got her in some trouble with my best friend and she had to edit it. Half of her posts talk about God too which is fine, but it’s way too holier than thou for me so I usually just skim through those ones.
I know exactly what you mean by that- I had a blog like three year ago that I had shut down after maybe 4 years of really blogging. And the reason I shut down was because everyone on the internet at the time was an asshole lol. I really didn’t feel the need to share my life with people that were buying graphics to sell on their site, blogging like they were a professional writer, slamming people that weren’t like that, and people that were basically just hit hungry. I only recently got back into it because a few of my offline friends mentioned that they had blogs, plus the online friends that I did keep from my blog had mentioned that they wanted to get started up again. But yeh, I completely feel you lol.
As far as blogging styles, I like people who speak their mind, post a variety of different content, and basically just keep me around due to pure interest in what they have to say, no matter how they say it. Is that vague? Ah well.
Anyways, love the site
Everything about it an you are interesting, I’ll be back for sure!