I am not a blogger. I hate the word “blog.” In fact, when somebody comes up to me and says, “dude, do you blog?”—I say something like, “what are you, some sort of queer?”
And Peter Hoytema, the pastor of Midland Park Christian Reformed Church in Ridgewood, NJ, concurs. Kind of.
<holding hands over ears>
Stop! Don’t say that! Stop, I said! Lalalalala! I can’t heeeeeeear you!
Whatever you linked to certainly wasn’t a blog; it looked more like some sort of a questionnaire, so I left the page without reading it.
I’ve got dinner at the Palm Terrace in Paramus that says this is some graying hippie with a congregation of dopey Whole Earth shoppers and au pairs.
Ridgewood. Ptui–I spit on their web belts.
I’ll make a note.
swimdad
Hmmm…so what was that whole business with the 2004 blog awards? You know…Scrappleface (definitely not a blog) and endorsements from Allah.
I got a new jersey something registration page. So what did the good pastor say?
People in North Jersey aren’t doing a lot of blogging, eh? Excellent. Less foolishness to wade through.
[story now requires registration, so I posted it below; from NorthJersey.com]
Blog, blog, blog.
If you rely on the news media to keep on top of the latest trends, you can’t be blamed for thinking that blogs – the Internet’s jargon for personal Web journals – are the biggest thing since e-mail.
Howard Dean’s campaign blog was the reason he became an unlikely front-runner in the Democratic primary. Bloggers were the darlings of the summer’s Democratic convention, and the people who brought down Dan Rather by questioning his reporting. “Blog” was the most looked-up word on Merriam-Webster’s Web site in 2004, and bloggers were named one of the “People of the Year” by ABC News.
If you’re not keeping a blog, or at least reading them, you’re hopelessly behind the times, right?
Well, don’t panic. A survey released Sunday by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 62 percent of Internet users don’t really know what blogs are.
The survey reveals that blogs, as interesting as they may be to journalists, have yet to capture the imagination – or the eyeballs – of the general public.
“I just think it’s kind of a waste of time,” said Peter Hoytema, the pastor at Midland Park Christian Reformed Church in Ridgewood. “I don’t find a whole lot of productive discussion coming out of them. I’d rather read newspapers or The New Yorker or something to get some good insightful commentary on world events.”
Still, it’s a rapidly growing diversion. The percentage of Internet users who say they read blogs – short for “Web logs” – jumped from 17 percent in February to 27 percent in November. And the percentage of users who have created blogs rose from 5 percent to 7 percent.
Technorati, a search engine company devoted to blogs, estimates there are more than 5 million blogs on the Web – three times the number in February.
A typical blog is filled with the writer’s musings and observations, which appear in reverse chronological order (the most recent entries appear at the top). Blogs often include links to articles |the blogger finds interesting, and offer readers an opportunity to post comments. The Pew survey found that 12 percent of Internet users have posted comments or other material on other users’ blogs.
The most prominent blogs, at least for now, are political commentators, with a well-defined point of view. But many more bloggers simply use their site as a not-so-private diary.
“I’m in class right now. I should be studying for a quiz I need to take in 5 minutes, but screw that,” says the most recent entry from the blog of James Lizardi-McGee, a 17-year-old at Ridgefield Park High School. “School today, is gonna rock because well, I’m not going to do any work, heh.”
Whether or not anyone is actually reading their musings and observations is often irrelevant to bloggers.
“Some people play sports to burn off energy,” said Sarah Hayllar, a Jersey City woman who keeps two blogs at her Web site, hayllar.com. “Some people have activities that they do. I write, and I write online. Originally, it was sort of ‘Maybe someone’s reading, maybe someone’s not, but I know I’m speaking.’ And that was enough.”
Now she has an audience. Hayllar, who used to teach writing part-time at Fairleigh Dickinson University and Drew University and now works as an administrative assistant for a New York company, says about 50 to 60 people visit her site each day, from as far away as Australia, Israel and Scandinavia.
Such a following would have been nearly impossible without the Internet. Combine that with the creativity that goes into many blogs, their ability to drive the discussion in certain elite circles, and their simple novelty, and blogs have become irresistible to the media.
Still, interviews with people in North Jersey confirm that blogs aren’t really registering. Even if they know what blogs are, they usually don’t read them. And if they do, it’s generally the blog of someone they know – another way of catching up.
“I wouldn’t even know how to access them, to be honest with you,” said Phil Angeli, a 25-year-old law student who grew up in Bergen County. “And I know they’re huge now, especially with the last election. I guess I don’t know what is reputable and what is not. … I’m pretty busy, so it’s not like I have a ton of time to kill on the Internet … especially if it’s just looking at other people’s thoughts on the newspaper or something like that.”
So is it all a bunch of hype? |A bit, says Jay Rosen, the journalism department chairman at |New York University and a blogger himself.
But he insists it’s not a transitory fad – blogs are an outlet people never had before, and that will prove liberating to many more people.
“It’s too fundamental,” he said. “Self-publishing is what the heart of this revolution is about. That’s not going away.”
Self-punishing is at the heart of this revolution.
And Tucker Carlson isn’t old enough to fetch beer. He’s not even shaving yet.
So we are basically just talking to each other.
Thats cool.
Blogger blogger blogger, Jeff G is a blogger.
So there.
And you’re a pundit-y blogger, too.
So there some more.
Watch the remarks about North Jersey, smart asses. We’re all either connected up in this part of the state, or filthy Bergen County rich. Well, then there’s Newark. And what would a pastor from Ridgewood know about anything anyway? It ain’t like he’s Mr. Richard Feder. Pfft!
As an alternative, how about “fuck”?
Like, “hey man, did you read my fuck today? It’s the talk of the fuckosphere. I got linked by InstaFucker, and now I’m number 6 on FuckDex. Man, that sweet FuckAd money is gonna start rolling in.”
Also, “pie” would be good.
You mean the original name for my, er, fuck would have been “fuckaSFERICS”?
That woulda been so cool. I don’t think I would’ve changed it.
Tucker Carlson’s bow tie is old enough to get Jeff a beer.
Do members of the West Texas Dixie Cloggers Webring worry about being called Cloggers? And do they consider themselves part of an ever-expanding Clogosphere?
These distinctions concern me.
It’s all an act with Tucker Carlson and his little boy bowtie.
He goes home, slips into latex clothing and has his dominatrix beat him with a whip made from unwashed liberal hair.
Please don’t ask me how I know that.
Free your mind, and the rest will follow.
Are you kidding! This is like a religion …. no competition, no pope and a guru with wisps of Satyricon and side-splitting twists.
McGehee, yeah, but Rightwingf*&k just wouldn’t have worked for me.
Don’t forget to add protien wisdom to your whatroll?
As I reached to type this entry my fingers encountered my Seafood Newberg instead of my keyboard, which was messy to say the least, and completely meaningless if I’m not a blogger. I mean, otherwise I’m just a dumbass.
You have the word “blogger” running interference for some sort of nonsequitor, and when the blocker is tackled all you’ve got is what my sister throws out every year with the Christmas cookies and the decorative wrapping. Like…, garbage with an attitude.
Which is definitely not gay.
Sure.
Wait, huh?