Blogging: a blog post.

I also laughed about the Neal Pollack bit.

I don't know too much about blogging. I read Neil Gaiman's blog pretty religiously between the ages of fifteen and eighteen, and I have a Facebook, but that's about it. Back in the eigth grade my friend's all had blogs on some hip teen site, where we'd post little bitch-fests about how Adam shouldn't be such a dick to his ex-girlfriend or Laura shouldn't wear ugly green pants or blah blah blah, and that sort of turned me off the whole blogging thing. All the ones I've run into or have been directed to by acquaintances are usually just what I expect them to be: overgrown teenagers who either complain about things way too much, bash other overgrown teenagers with semi-literate insults, post really bad poetry that clearly didn't go through more than a single rough draft, or talk about what their cats did that day.

Now, I'm sure that there are good blogs out there, but I just haven't run into that many. And personally, I'm not sure it's worth the effort to wade through all the crap out there to get at the gems.

As for the whole idea of networking and community, I'm not sure. Yes, it's definitely got an appeal. It's got to be a real high to post some crap about your day and suddenly have a dozen comments from like-minded bloggers encouraging you to write more. But, like several of the people below me, I feel like this encouragement and sense of community doesn't really have any importance in the real world. I mean, what happens when you send something out to a publisher and they reject it? Are you going to send back an angry letter saying "Who needs you morons anyway? My blogger friends think I'm awesome." That'll sure change some minds.

I can't deny that blogging has lead to some big things for people, though. This piece shows that. And I'm always running into bookstores and seeing books that have been adapted from something published online, like a story or a webcomic. I even have a friend whose being turned into a Batman character because DC liked his blog. Hell, I even saw a -billboard- for someone's blog a few months ago. A freaking billboard. Maybe these signs point to the fact that I haven't given blogs a fair chance, and that I still don't understand their full potential. Maybe one day I will break down and start one, and then we can laugh at me like we laugh at Neal Pollack. Anything's possible.