Ramblings

Yeah....

Well, the wiki article was interesting enough I suppose. It was informational to say the least, though it kind of made me wonder "what would my blog count as?" And then it made me wonder "why does the world force me into categories all the time"? And then that made me wonder "when did I get that emo?"

Not that I have anything against emo people, but that's not my thing. And "don't lable me" is so tired. I mean, seriously, if you're going to have teenage angst, at least have some original teenage angst.

Anyway, I liked this list of blog types better. It's longer and more entertaining.

Also, that link reminded me about memes. Gah, they're like the chain mail (not chainemaile) of the blogosphere (THAT WASN'T JUST A CHEAP EXCUSE TO USE THE WORD BLOGOSPHERE. I DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT). Anyway, it is my personal opinion that memes and tagging are the spawn of the devil, and I try to avoid contact with them whenever possible.

But oh man... that second article.... Whatever flaming Gorman got he deserved wholesale. Do you ever read something and when you put it down, no matter how compelling the argument was, all you can think is "man, that author was a total jackass." The human being who wrote that article was simply too concieted for words. Reading that short article made ME want to flame him--I can only imagine what an entire book must have been like.

Just so that this isn't completely unjustified ranting, let me explain myself. The nature of the language Gorman used was maddeningly condescending, and his basic argument against bloggers boiled down to "they're stupid so people shouldn't pay attention to what they think." Here, here's what I'm talking about:

It is obvious that the Blog People read what they want to read rather than what is in front of them and judge me to be wrong on the basis of what they think rather than what I actually wrote. Given the quality of the writing in the blogs I have seen, I doubt that many of the Blog People are in the habit of sustained reading of complex texts. It is entirely possible that their intellectual needs are met by an accumulation of random facts and paragraphs. In that case, their rejection of my view is quite understandable.

I'm acutally having a hard time expressing how angry this makes me without using swear words. It's quite a challenge. But he just undermines these people, basically calling their opinions worthless. What makes his opinion so special? Just because it's published in a book instead of on the internet? People can post whatever they want about whatever they want in their blogs and it's his problem if he goes and reads it. Honestly.

I guess I'll round out this link dump with that article from Pew I did for my presentation. It was actually pretty interesting if you want to check it out.