I don't know if blogs are evil. I don't know if blogs are good. But I do think they're too much. Too much blogs. But I, personally am not overwhelmed by them. I mean I get the benefits, the ones Spiers mentions, the ones that even turned her on to blogs in the beginning. There's a nice sense of community sometimes and, sure, you can get all this feedback on your writing and your ideas, especially when there's a group of people who are following those ideas and that writing, so they have a grander concept of your intentions as a whole. But there's the down side to that when everyone is presenting their writing and their ideas as the Truth without anyone to edit out the shit.

Still, blogs, as many of them as there are, aren't totally unavoidable. If you don't want to hear someone's opinion don't read it. Myself, I've never followed a blog. Besides of course the one for this class and one I had for a CRW. But those were the opinions of people I knew (at least somewhat) and could trust. Actually, as fascist or ellitist as the "Soho House of blogs" password protecting idea brought up by Gage in the article is, it would have it's benefits. I mean, this blog is pretty much like that. Someone from outside of the class couldn't just jump in and start throwing around ideas. What's wrong with having a selected group of people using a blog as a forum to discuss a subject that everyone there is known to be knowledgable in? If you started a writers group you would want to invite people whose opinions and writing you trusted. You'd be pissed off if some moron got invited in and was wasting everyone's time because they didn't understand or have enough experience to add something worthwhile to the critiquing so he ended up just constantly talking out of his ass.

But then that's not the motivation behind most blogs. Most blogs are created in an attempt to get the word out about the creator's work and opinions. The creator of that blog wants as many people as he/she can get to see what they've posted and then continue to spread the word. But in those cases, the people that are responding, that are commenting on that initial blog, if they say something stupid no one really cares. When they start an poorly constructed argument only morons with too much time on their hands bother to argue back. So yeah, there's a lot of space on the web devoted to stupid opinions and worthless arguments. But no one HAS to read them. No one HAS to respond to them. The self-congratulation, the "echo chamber effect" and in-jokes within in-jokes: they're pretty easy to spot. And when you spot them you just move on, you don't read it. It's the same thing with the 5-minute thrown together zines. No one HAS to read those either.

I'll add this too. I think it's a little funny how harsh Neal Pollack is on blogs in this piece (no matter how much I enjoy his writing). Because, as some people might have heard when he came to Columbia last semester, he now makes (what I would assume would be a decent chunk of) his living blogging on a parenting website. Oh, well.