Blogs Anyone???

So what does blogging entail and why should one take it up or not take it up…. I think (and I could be wholly wrong even) that the word ‘blog’ arrived from the word ‘weblog’ which literally means maintaining an online dairy. (Note: MS Word refuses to acknowledge the word ‘blog’… it gives me a spell check error and instead suggests that I replace the word ‘blog’ with ‘bog’… quite emancipatory I must say… but seriously what else would you expect from MS Word) Somewhere along the way …some person decided to give it a jazzy name and hence the word ‘blog’ evolved. Pretty catchy I must say… A blog could relate to anything… your thoughts about life capturing different emotions, hues, various moods etc etc…in essence it is a personal diary which reveals much about you (or does it J) … could be personal ramblings, which you would like to share with a certain audience (oops … I mean ‘constituency’ … since the words ‘audience’, ‘target-group’ and their ilk are not supposed to be used by development practitioners… and for better or for worse I am one by qualification...sigh…lol). However, if one goes back to the very classical understanding of a personal diary, diaries are meant to be extremely intimate in nature… usually not shared with all and sundry… a passage to one’s deepest secrets privy only to oneself.

So, if a blog is the web equivalent of a personal diary, what is it that makes all those people who maintain blogs literally advertise it to the entire world… and trust me even with the strictest of privacy settings, it’s impossible for your blog to remain anonymous on the big bad world of the Internet (so my notions about the Internet or at least some facets of it have come out pretty strongly in this sentence). I have a strong hunch that people who maintain blogs are not privacy purists anyways… they typically know that information of this sort is bound to be accessed by people the world over. So I come back to my original question… why do people blog… why do they reveal so much about themselves… and here I think there are two important points to understand… one about the seductive nature of the Internet and the second point, about human psyche, which typically likes to flirt with this seductive nature of things… Internet or otherwise. And at this point, I must draw your attention to something similar … not exactly a parallel but something which intrigues me immensely … it’s from the original Star Wars Trilogy of which I am a HUGE fan… it’s a beautiful trilogy…masterpiece even… and has something for everyone…and you can draw parallels with different aspects of life … the thing about that trilogy which really intrigues me is the entire concept of ‘the dark side’ and especially ‘Darth Vader’… I mean, there is something about the dark side/Darth Vader that really pulls you towards it… you know it represents evil and yet you are completely enamoured by it. The tremendous power that it brings along with it, the sway that it has over matter … there is something extremely compelling about it which draws you to it… The seductive nature of the Internet is akin to the power of the dark side… it completely overwhelms you… though by no means am I suggesting that the Internet is evil ;-) … just to illustrate the power of the Internet :).

So now I have this situation where I was so caught up about analysing about the dark side that I have totally forgotten what I am writing about… So coming back to blogs, bloggers and the Internet (MS Word once again reminds me that the word is not ‘Bloggers’ … but in fact ‘loggers’… thank you MS word once again for showing the light), it is extremely easy to put a cloak of anonymity over who you really are. The Internet does not ask who you are, does not demand any kind of verification. It accepts you as you are and allows you to be who/what you want to be (I think this line is borrowed from some movie or something… can’t remember which one though). And therefore it is not entirely surprising that millions of people the world over are coming online and giving themselves an ‘online-avtaar’. People create blogs, communicate with fellow bloggers, share stories, criticise each other (constructively and otherwise) and so on.

The human mind is a unique entity. It requires to vent, to be acknowledged, loved, loathed and so on. And the human mind will search for all possible avenues to satiate these diverse needs. A blog is the simplest way in the pursuit of the above points. When we want to vent, all we need to do is to go ‘clickity clang’ on the keyboard and voilà… there you have it… a blog allows you to create your own truths … it is your own space to do whatever you want …well at least virtually :). Some of us would blog to just express our thoughts which would otherwise have been difficult to get across other medium, while others would, as I said hope to achieve something totally different. Who knows what are my hidden motivations to jot down these points ;-)…

Personally, I think that blogging is a good stress buster, mentally and physically (you get a good exercise for your fingers and eye muscles). It has tremendous potential for the immediate future, some people have referred to it as a new wave in journalism… which allows for people to do their own thing… and while I am initially tempted to agree with that point… a majority of the blogs which I have read are nothing but vanity and trivia … they represent the values of people who are presently connected to the Internet… typically the yuppie middle class population (I’m talking about Indian bloggers) and we very well know what kind of value system they represent and the danger in equating their writing to journalism and their views as the voice of India… Therefore, at this point of time, lets leave journalism to serious journalists (such as those from Indian Express and Hindu) and take blogs less seriously, however at the same time hope that increased Internet penetration will bring about a divergent population online who will and I’m sure that they will… take up blogging on serious topics and that’s when blogs will truly realise their potential.

P.S. - Darth Vader on the Internet

“The Internet … it is your destiny”