Why Do You Have a Blog?

[feces]

I personally choose to have a blog because it helps me think about things by writing about them. The fact is almost no one reads it is actually a bit of a comfort, but the chance that a few people might helps me to continue writing. For me having a blog is about having an excuse to practice writing, rhetoric/communication are skills I'm keen on developing.

[Horsey Chobunso]

I mostly want a reason to practice writing. I want to write more seriously in both fiction and nonfiction, so having a blog gives me an easy goal to work towards.

[rnottelovesowls]

there's something cathartic about getting your thoughts out there in a medium that everyone understands: writing. i've used bear blog since april of this year, and since starting my blog, i feel like i've gotten out so much of what i've struggled to paraphrase; all my thoughts, frustrations, and opinions on living life as an artist in this bizarre technological hellscape we all live in

why specifically bear blog, though, and not a big social network like facebook or twitter? not just because bear doesn't allow provocative language or AI slop, but because the customization options are fantastic; every site is the site owners' own. on twitterX, all you get is an avatar and a banner. boooooring! as an artist who's been told to "be myself" one too many times growing up, i naturally put a lot of effort into expressing myself, so you can bet i will appreciate any avenue for doing so. and what better way to express yourself than your own personalized journal?

[mir]

this is a question that I heavily deliberate since I really want to have a ("true") Blog of my own yet hesitate. I notice many mention benefits that could really be more attributed to generally just having a journal than having a journal online, that is to say there's few mention of the benefits of having what essentially could just be your diary out in public, possibly permanently on the internet. (excuse the paranoid definition)

If I write my thoughts in a book and then hide it away somewhere, then I'm basically tossing these thoughts into the void, thus my feelings of isolation persist.

this struck out to me, because despite the connection and permanence(kinda) the internet offers, I've mainly interpreted posting your feelings online as "shouting into the void", especially on the slow web on personal websites where visitors are unlikely. I do think, anyway, that one is only "seen" once another responds, or basically we remain unseen despite being on the net unless someone literally reaches out through email or guestbook, although this perspective I have is being challenged.

as for other people reading them, I don’t care extensively about that aspect of blogging, but giving strangers something to briefly think about is better than having entries sitting somewhere and be unseen.

I suppose it's about giving. your words, once on the net, ceases to be yours, I think. in the literal sense it's spread across servers, downloaded onto various drives... embedded in strangers' memories on way or another. like casing a thought in amber for others to see no matter how far into the future

..or not. either way it's a feeling felt and written out of our hands and that's all the purpose it needs to serve

[Bindao]

Fundamentally, my blog is for me most of all, which doesn't mean I don't want other people to read it (because I do, in fact). The reason I maintain a blog is because we have created this crazy thing which we call the internet and we don't really understand what it is. We think that we do, but we really don't. The speed of development and creation of the web and its subjacent forces is so fast it has defied the very pace required to examine it more carefully. At the same time, the internet, due to its inherent characteristics, compels us much more to action than to reflection, which is another reason why we don't understand it. In my opinion, most academic attempts to shed light on it have been, up to this point, very superficial or, at best, incomplete as well. My blog is a personal attempt (and for that reason indicative above all of my doubts and intellectual yearnings) to answer some questions pertaining to what the internet and the cultural forms we experience on it are, as well as to which processes of becoming they are subjected. In this sense, I'm swimming against the tide and I don't expect my efforts to be appreciated by many, but I do hope that a select few think just as I do and find what I write enlightening.

Personally, I dislike how the internet is a transitory and trivial space, a concealer of true realities and promoter of mystifications about everything and everyone. The best use we can make of it is to extract from it what it can offer us that is most profound, and in that sense it can be quite useful, indeed, but more and more this more idealistic side of the internet project (the internet as a large library or museum, where people behave as they do in libraries and museums, that is, with the respect, interest and admiration expected of the public in those spaces) is forgotten and set aside in favor of another conception, in favor of subjecting the web to the pettiest and basest appetites of the human species. Many people think the original internet project is doomed, but I suspect that perhaps it never had the potential we optimistically imagined it had, and that maybe we naively dreamt too much in its early days.

[theinvertedform]

i first made a website because i wanted to index my projects and writing that had appeared elsewhere. i wanted to be able to point people to one place where they could find everything i had done. i kept working on my website and pretty soon i realized that it was many, many times better than all the other websites hosting my writing. the typography, the design, and the various special features all created a much more pleasant reading environment, so i started posting my writing on my website.

over the years i've thought a lot about the literary forms of writing online. what is a blog, exactly? the word is a contraction of web log. it used to be associated with just posting links, accompanied by excerpts and minimal or no commentary by the blog author. tumblr posting of pictures to create running mood boards is in a similar mode.

there is also a tradition of online writing that is more diaristic and confessional, and which is often called blogging. the literary history of diary writing is quite venerable in itself, and may be considered some form of subgenre of memoir writing. (one published diary that i love is called The Journal of a Disappointed Man, by WNP Barbellion, first published in 1919.) both senses of the blog are to create something like a running stream, rather than discrete works.

not all online writing is necessarily confessional / emotional; there is just as much blogging about culture and politics. i have always loved "little magazines," independent, privately-published magazines that, like blogs, create snapshots of culture and society at a particular time. i have also always loved and studied philosophy, and as i studied the literary-philosopher-critics that i admired most, i observed that they tend to circulate around a few concepts or themes. this is also true of any artist---the best authors tend to re-write the same book over and over.

i wanted my work to fit together. i want it to be a single project: not discontinuous articles, but rather essays that approach related themes and concepts from different angles. at the same time, in parallel, i wanted to write in a diaristic mode, to narrativize my life and my emotional state as a complement to, or context for the conceptual writing.

all of this created further incentive to focus on self-publishing my writing. obviously i feel a lot of conflict around this. because of my whole set-up, my writing environment is extremely close to my publishing environment. i can constantly edit and refine published works; i am constantly seeking to create closer links between published works on my website, constantly trying to create rich media environments and illustrative, legible information architectures. i am quite interested in writing online and the possibilities of new media / hypermedia / hypertext, even though i know that reading on screens is objectively a worse experience than reading books.

the main conflict i feel is around self-publishing. most magazines, especially online magazines, don't actually get that much readership and can't meaningfully promise much. but in the same principle as a webring, it's a good idea to spread out in order to increase exposure. the main thing is that the pitching & submission process is an absolute killer. typically you're waiting minimum three months to hear back. if you pitch an idea and wait three + months to get rejected, the idea is dead. if you write, then submit and wait three + months to get rejected, then it becomes virtually impossible to ever write about anything timely. if you write a piece, then submit it for a year, then, following publication or rejection, self-publish it, then your website is always lagging behind. but it barely matters, given how hard it is to generate traffic to a website. but it's hard for magazines to generate traffic as well, and i feel like i might as well just be my own publisher, given that my website is meant to be structured like a magazine...

basically the best argument that i have heard for playing the long and painful game of submitting to and publishing in magazines is that it increases one's chances of getting a grant...idk, it's all very depressing to think about, so i'll end it there.