May 17, 2001

5:24 AM

Is there anyone NOT blogging?asks The Washington Post. A mention for our own Jessamyn and Postroad, as well as the obligatory quote from Ev and brief mention of the Blogger-Trellix deal.
posted by briank (24 comments total)

Me.
posted by straight at 5:59 AM on May 17, 2001

Me neither.
posted by davehat at 6:06 AM on May 17, 2001

Following the Ehrenreich/Fallows discussion of about a week and half ago, snarkout wrote a little something wondering about the lack of blue collar blogs that seems relevant.
posted by claxton6 at 6:11 AM on May 17, 2001

I used to blog, but then it was like.. oh well.
I just don't have anything to say, that's all, I don't think there'll be many more a-list celebrity blogs, when I first come on to the phenomenon, there was a community, a very close one, seemed like everyone knew everyone else. For the most part it broke up into clusters of 20 people exchanging links, I was part of such group. Then all these people showed up and ruined it for everyone. Just like Metafilter. heh. : )

Oh, this was my first time that I saw the tech section of Washington post, it looks really good, better than the front page. I hate white backgrounds, they're annoying, boring and hurt your eyes. Now, everyone's real careful on browsers, and operating systems, why not monitors? Most people have really crappy 13" crts, that, through the years have been burnt through, imagine the poor saps getting eye cancer because some jerk-off didn't bother to think.
posted by tiaka at 7:11 AM on May 17, 2001

As someone who has done 'blue collar' work, but don't really consider myself a blue collar 'worker', I've written a bit in my diary on Kuro5hin about my days at work, but I think two things that prevented me from writing more is: a) general apathy from everyone reading, and b) after 12 hours at work, I want to come home, shuck off my dirty clothes, get in the shower and wash the filth off of my body, forget about the next 12 hours, and remind myself of the 12 hours that's coming up in the morning.
posted by AdamJ at 7:20 AM on May 17, 2001

Uh... well I hate to break the news to the media, but their articles are about a year too late.

Most of my favorite places to catch up on people's lives and projects have gone back to being "What's new on this site" or "Updates" pages. (My "Whuzzup!" included).

A prime example is The Webmistress... movers and shakers on the web really don't have time to "blog".

Weblogs are a dying trend as far as I can tell....
posted by EricBrooksDotCom at 7:26 AM on May 17, 2001

The average blogger update is 2.2 times a day??? What? That's insane. At the current rate, I'm going to be lucky to update 2.2 times a week by midsummer.

And then there's the Blue Collar Blog phenomenon. Hmmph. Now, I love Snarkout like a brudder, but I could feel hairs bristling when I read that. What, pray tell, is a Blue Collar Blog? Just because I work in a warehouse am I required to write the Warehouse Blog? How absurd is that? Computer people and academics have no need to justify holding forth on any number of topics. Why should I need to justify my positions based on my occupation?

Yeah, I understand that wasn't the point, but I don't think it's necessarily relevent what people do in the Real World. It's also probably a basic insecurity on my part that my opinions seem marginalized based on my occupation when I occasionally move in more elite circles (which I do from time to time, based on my wife's work).

As for blogs=dying trend, that's absurd. Just because a few that you read aren't updating anymore that means the trend is over? Why, then, are there more blogs now than ever? That, friends, is some real elitism.
posted by norm at 7:38 AM on May 17, 2001

We-ll, Snarkout didn't make any reference to "Blue Collar Blogs" as such (though Claxton did); he just noted that in reading blogs, one tends to get a rather narrow crossection of the working public. Depending on the ratio of diary:other subject matter on a site, this is a more or less relevant concern.
posted by redfoxtail at 7:49 AM on May 17, 2001

(The title of that entry in my blog was "Blue Collar Blogs," but that was because I couldn't think of anything pithier and more accurate.)

Just because I work in a warehouse am I required to write the Warehouse Blog? How absurd is that? Computer people and academics have no need to justify holding forth on any number of topics. Why should I need to justify my positions based on my occupation?

I love you too, Norm.

You certainly have no need to justify your positions based on what you do; my relatives who do blue-collar work frequently have more interesting (and often more informed) opinions about things I'm interested in than my relatives who do white-collar work. And I'm sure that there are general-interest weblogs written by people who shoot my thesis all to hell; I've probably even read some of them, and they don't mention their authors' occupations because that fact is irrelevant to their content.

On the other hand, I find people talking about their jobs awfully interesting; my favorite thing on word.com was their Work column. I like Studs Turkel books. Just off the top of my head, the three weblogs that I read that make most frequent reference to the workaday world are Zeldman's, Jessamyn's, and Lileks'.

When I read something like Amy Lester's essay on why she doesn't miss teaching, I wish there was more about it out there, and I think that the fact that most weblog writers -- at this point in time -- are academics or computer people contributes at least partially to that lack.

If it was written well enough, I think WarehouseBlog could be fascinating. (The "written well enough" thing is the killer, of course.)
posted by snarkout at 8:09 AM on May 17, 2001

norm: Real-world employ is not exactly relevant, but it's a positive thing to get a diversity of viewpoints, which is going to go along, at least somewhat, with occupation and socio-economic status. What I gather snarkout was after was a de-marginalizing of working class points of view, and that he'd see adumbrating someone's life into "job x was this today" as an anathema.

But having gotten the ball rolling on it, I do feel a little guilty at my own "let's get more of them in here" tone/condescension.

(Also, on topic, this was meant to be a way of pointing out the insularity of the article--there's plenty of people not blogging.)
posted by claxton6 at 8:10 AM on May 17, 2001

Derf. Not meant to pile on.
posted by claxton6 at 8:12 AM on May 17, 2001

The blogging articles are starting to resemble a network news grabber-commercial that I saw last night, open-mouthed. The breathless voice-over said something like, "Find out tonight how the new hottest thing on the internet is . . . selling drugs?!?" . . . with that horseshit tone of mock-disbelief.

They flashed a shot of a computer screen. Yes, they were doing a story on the game Drug Wars. How fresh! How timely! How fast can I turn the channel!
posted by Skot at 8:14 AM on May 17, 2001

The title of that entry in my blog was "Blue Collar Blogs," but that was because I couldn't think of anything pithier and more accurate.

Oops, I'm an idiot. Sorry, Norm.
posted by redfoxtail at 8:16 AM on May 17, 2001

Well, didn't mean to sound contentious. In my experience, the First Wave of blogs were these academic and computer oriented people, but with 169,000 Blogger blogs out there, and countless more in the other formats, there is no dearth of occupations and lifestyles represented. Maybe blue collar people aren't identifying themselves as such because they too have interest in the computer world. Personally, I know when I dig around in the Lesser Known Blogs out there, I always run into people bitching about their crappy assed jobs that usually have nothing to do with computers or academia. Seek and ye shall find.
posted by norm at 8:48 AM on May 17, 2001

Bloggers suck.
posted by jcterminal at 9:57 AM on May 17, 2001

see. what's funny is how i said 'bloggers suck', but it linked to mine.

...

*sigh*
posted by jcterminal at 12:03 PM on May 17, 2001

for the record, I have been doing librarian.net since about 1999 and I think this is the first major press I've gotten. I didn't know anyone read it except people on the reference desk. I do love how they neglected to link to the name of the site [which is also its URL, freaky!], so I won't self-link, in tribute.

And for anyone and everyone who says blogging is "over" I just respond the same way as I do to people who say that about Burning Man: "good. then nerds like me can show up and have a good time without everyone saying we wrecked it"
posted by jessamyn at 12:09 PM on May 17, 2001

If you won't link to librarian.net, I will.
posted by sudama at 2:04 PM on May 17, 2001

How long will it take for an a lister to complain about an inordinate focus on Ev?
posted by Octaviuz at 2:36 PM on May 17, 2001

"Movers and shakers on the web really don't have time to 'blog'... Weblogs are a dying trend as far as I can tell."

Okay, nothing specifically against you, EricBrooks, but this comment aggravated a pet peeve of mine.. wasn't the original purpose of weblogging, and weblogging apps like Blogger, to bring personal publishing to 'the people'? And, based strictly on the rapid increase in the number of blogs since the form's inception (if not the extreme variety of content), isn't that happening? So, why are we supposed to be concerned about what the "movers and shakers on the web" (all fine, talented folks I'm sure) may or may not be doing? I and tens of thousands of other poor working slobs seem to be well pleased with our weblogs, thanks. I'm not sure why one is tempted to declare a whole genre dead because a handful of people have decided to name their pages something else... it seems a wee bit preemptive. Okay, end of rant. :)
posted by jess at 4:35 PM on May 17, 2001

It's not true that everyone has a Weblog. I don't.

Yet.

But I will.
posted by kindall at 5:01 PM on May 17, 2001

i don't even work and i keep a weblog. so far as communities go, i'm involved in one that includes a wide expanse of people and cliques. i shan't mention the community because i'm sure you all know of the "founder"...

anyhow, this whole making an issue of weblogs thing has gone a little far. we all know that ev could really care less about the people who use blogger, especially an appreciable amount of whom are teenagers. everyone wants their fifteen minutes. and if they can take up a few megs of space online, it fills that hole. oddly enough, a good majority of these webloggers come from the "me first" generation. twenty somethings. the ones who run red lights because wherever they're going is more important than where anyone else is going. i think i've beat the me first horse to death enough around here.

okay, so everyone has a weblog. who cares? they aren't infringing on anything that's yours, and, if anything, they're promoting understanding and more perspectives on life.

.. and god knows this is only a trend, much like reality tv.
posted by natasharama at 6:45 PM on May 17, 2001

My apologies Jess... perhaps "dead" was too strong of a word. Sure blogs will be around (like the "lake class", tacky Geocities wallpaper and those annoying scrolling toolbar messages...).

... but you can't honestly tell me it's going to be the "big trend" every one thought it would be this time last year.

People have every right to express themselves, I think that's great. However, on the topic of pet peeves... what I think killeslowed down the "phenomenon" was a question of quantity-vs-quality. It's like some think "ohmygawd! I haven't posted in two hours, people wont come back..."

So they talk about the chair they just bought, or how their tires need air... something, to keep the content fresh.

Come on guys... didn't Lance Arthur teach you anything? Something funny or interesting *had* to happen to you sometime this week.

the "movers and shakers on the web" (all fine, talented folks I'm sure)
And what are *you*, chopped liver? ;0)
posted by EricBrooksDotCom at 7:56 PM on May 17, 2001

Well, I think blogging has/will follow the arc of the web - hyped as "the next big thing", the hype dies down then gets quiet as it becomes another part of life.

I do tend to notice that there is definitely a "class" of people who are the more well known bloggers - pretty much white collar, upper middle class types.

But I urge you all to check out some of the blogs of the younger set - a lotta teenage angst, but some unique things being done.
posted by owillis at 9:22 PM on May 17, 2001