Bloggers unite!
Maybe I’ve just been thinking about this too much, but why don’t more of my friends – no, scratch that — acquaintances have weblogs?
Consider this: I currently have 33 friends on MySpace. Now, before you say “whoopee, I have 43,543 friends and you’re lame,” consider that my MySpace friends, aside from a couple band sites and Scott Hudson, are all people that I’ve actually met in life – as in, I’ve had conversations with them, drank beer with them, know their names and would say “hello” to them if I passed them in the street.
Okay, that’s probably not that impressive.
Still, I’m amazed that…
1. No one else that I know has even a personal blog, the most chic thing to do in the Internet world.
2. If they do have blogs, I don’t know anything about them.
3. All of these friends of mine can spend time tinkering with their MySpace account, but they can’t find time to do something more “productive,” like write personal journals about their favorite links, their boring lives, and their half-assed observations.
You know, like I do.
In fact, I only know three people, personally, with any sort of blog – Chris, a co-worker that actually hasn’t met more than two of the other people that I know in life; Eric, who’s too busy being a rock star to write about sports anymore (that was sarcasm, Eric, you know that, right?); and Dave, who started student teaching (I think) and has dropped off the face of the Earth or, at least, has holed himself up into some dark corner of St. Cloud, Minnesota. Coincidentally, these blogs are rarely, if ever, updated.
Yet I know at least 25 people who have lame MySpace accounts. Don’t take offense… it’s just a proven fact that MySpace is lame. I know. I’m a member with a lame account.
Listen, what I’m proposing is a blog alliance – a collective, if you will, of this group of people that I know from Sioux Falls, or from Minneapolis, or from wherever I know them from. It’ll be a very “punk rock” thing to do. Get off of MySpace for a few minutes and, well, um… start a blog.
It’s not hard. If you lack the mental wherewithal to create your own blog from scratch, just go to one of the more popular “just add water” blog creators, like blogger.com. If you do know a little about HTML creation, you could make your own using WordPress or Movable Type. Just find a template and steal it. That’s what I did (thanks, by the way, to Vladimir Simovic).
If you don’t think you have anything to talk about, well, that’s balderdash. Everyone has something to talk about. Write about local music, or about nationally known music. Write about sports. Write about writing. Write about your life, regardless of how interesting it is. Let everyone know what you really think about stuff. I’d be willing to bet that 80% of the people that I’ve come in contact with in my life have something pretty interesting to say.
Hell, you should see the hits I manage to get blabbering along about books, Sirius radio, and the Pacers. You think your life is boring? For some reason, people sure want to know about other people, so nothing is too boring for the Internet.
There’s an amazingly large audience for life’s minutia, even if that large audience is a group of close friends and distant acquaintances. So you’ve got no excuse. At least give it a try.
If you’ve got a blog and are a close friend or distant acquaintance, let me know. If you don’t, go start one. Let’s flood the Internet with ridiculous stories and pointless links! Let’s get the Blog Alliance Coalition of the Collective World started!