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Stuff: The Internet is an enabling technology. It gives power to the people - the power to be heard, to be published. Anyone with access to a computer and a phone line can become an author, a journalist, a commentator, a rabble-rouser. How wonderful that everyone now has a voice. The trouble is, what we have discovered is that most people talk absolute drivel. Nothing shows this up more than the craze for blogging. For those who have had their heads in a bucket for the past year, and have missed out on this phenomenon, a weblog (blog for short) is like an online diary, where the blogger can write his or her thoughts, adding a new entry once a day or many times a day, as often as he or she feels the need to express him or herself. (Ok, all this "he or she" stuff is going to drive me mad, so I will from now on assume that our hypothetical blogger is male, and use he, him, his, and so on.) I know that sometimes people come up with thoughts that are interesting, witty, or funny. Sometimes they want to remember those thoughts so they can share them with their friends down the pub. Sometimes it's the pub environment that produces those thoughts, well lubricated with beer or spirits. Often the thoughts wouldn't be considered nearly so interesting if there wasn't beer or spirits involved! Even when the result really is funny or interesting, it is probably something ephemeral and not worth preserving beyond the moment. After all, a joke about something you saw in the news today is unlikely to be funny next week, let alone in several months time. Our blogger doesn't wait till he is down the pub to trot out his thoughts. He dives for the keyboard and spews the thoughts into his blogging software. Instant self-publication. The thought is preserved for posterity. The assumption is that his thoughts are valuable and other people will want to read them, not just now but next week, next month and next year, and will benefit from reading them. I don't think so. If a blog is like a diary, then what a change in usage we have seen! When I was young a diary was a private thing. It was somewhere to write your secret thoughts, your inner-most feelings, your wants and desires and passions. It wasn't intended for anyone else to see. It was a way to make sense of what was happening to you, particularly during adolescence, when everything changes so fast, and is so mixed up. It wasn't even intended to be read by the writer at a later date; the process of the writing was the point, the act itself, not the result. The idea that anyone else would read the diary was horrifying. It was hidden away from mother's prying eyes. But now the diary isn't private or secret, it's thrust out into the limelight. It doesn't hide itself away, it jumps up and down, screams "Look at me!" and shows you its insides. Which isn't a pretty sight! This isn't the place for a rant about illiteracy, bad grammar, lack of punctuation and impossible spelling. That's something I will write on another occasion. Just take it as read that all those sins are to be found in blogs. My objection is to a more fundamental problem than that. People are not taught to write any more, and they don't read enough books to pick up the basic rules by osmosis. They are not taught how to formulate their thoughts coherently and put them down on paper (or screen) in a logical manner. They don't understand that good writing isn't the same as talking; it involves considering what you want to say, and selecting the correct way to say it, rather than just blurting out the first thing that comes into your head. What brought this home to me was the discovery that even blogs written by people whose profession is the use of words - authors, comedians and so on - are pretty unreadable. But when you think about it, it's obvious. An author who writes a book or an article thinks about what he wants to write before setting pen to paper (or to be more up-to-date, finger to keyboard). Having written something, he edits it, proof-reads it, polishes it until it's as good as he can make it. A comedian who has a funny thought develops it, builds upon it, tries it out on his mates, drops the bits that don't work and makes it as funny as he can before using it in his stand-up routine. I looked at the blog of a comedian who I usually find very funny - and it was boring. A detailed recital of what he was doing every day, and all the thoughts he had, made very dull reading. I looked at the blog of an author whose books I read avidly, and that was boring too. The process of writing a book is not a spectator sport, and reporting on all its minutiae doesn't make it so. I did read a news report of one blog that made me think, "Yes, that's a good use of a blog." Back in April 2003, a climber called Lorenzo Gariano set off to tackle Everest, and recorded a report of every stage of his journey via a satellite phone, which was beamed to a website run by the Open University in England. Sounds great! Of course, this is more like a video diary than a blog, but let's not be picky. Reporting on the progress of some monumental challenge - whether it's climbing a mountain, training to run a marathon, or a person's battle with cancer - does make interesting reading. But most people's blogs are not about anything as exciting as that. Most people's lives are dull, dull, dull - and why would anyone want to read the tedious thoughts of tedious people living tedious lives? Not me. There is good news: recent research shows that two-thirds of blogs are quickly abandoned. Many don't get updated at all past the first day. Well, thank goodness! I realise I am leaving myself open to all sorts of abuse. In complaining about the lack of writing skill used on blogs, I fully expect to receive a flood of emails pointing out that my writing ain't so hot neither! I am accusing people of publishing text which is dull and pointless. Maybe people will find this article, and my others, dull and pointless too. But I am satisfied that I have done the best I can. I've put thought into this article; I've pondered the issues, and jotted down notes, and gone through several drafts before producing the final version that you are reading now. I've put in a lot of work, because I respect my readers. If I want people to listen to what I want to say, then I owe it to them to say it in the best way I can. And I just wish bloggers would do the same. |
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