Re: <nettime> The banality of blogging

["pavlos hatzopoulos" <phatzopoulos {AT} gmail.com>]

2007/8/10, Benjamin Geer <benjamin.geer {AT} gmail.com>:

> Congratulations, you've just discovered that blogs are merely a
> publishing tool, not some sort of magic wand for producing great,
> original writing.  A blog is like a pen.  You can write anything with
> it.  It doesn't predispose you to any particular type of writing.
> Therefore theorising about blogs is as vacuous as theorising about
> pens.  Complaining that most blogs are boring is like complaining that
> most of what people write with pens is boring.


We are also happy for the discovery. Blogs are tools, and so are pens, but
you *cannot* write anything you want with them. Tools determine the limits
of what you *can *write. Boredom is not a problem in itself, complaining is.
Blogging invites and celebrates banality - that was our point. 'Successful'
bloggers are good at that - when bloggers attempt to give a different
picture of the 'personal', which is immanently political, which is
inherently transgressive they are brushed aside.




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