A Blog About Blogs

When I signed up to take the class, ENG 306: Writing Blogs, I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. Because I had never even written a blog and it being such a new coming phenomenon, as a writer, I had to familiarize myself with the concept. I knew that we would be writing blogs, but I had no idea of the community surrounding this new trend. As I have experienced in this class, writing blogs has its good things and it’s bad. Some people can express themselves using this creative outlet and others can get into trouble because of it.

Wikipedia.com describes a blog as “a user-generated website where entries are made in journal style.” Honestly, this just screams trouble to me. Journals have always been a good way to express the way someone is feeling at a specific time, but journal entries to me are private and something not to be shared with the world. I use writing in my journal more as a release than anything else, half of the things I write are not even comprehensible. This is was the biggest difference between what I thought a blog was and what I learned it to be. Since we spent nearly half of each class in ENG 306 editing blogs, I quickly came to the realization that unlike writing in my journal, I needed to be clear and couldn’t have any grammatical errors. In this way, blogs become a more like essays to me than journal entries.

There are several good things about blog writing. If used properly it is a good way to get out your opinion. Since the blog community is fairly big and seems to be increasing, many people are obviously interested in the thoughts of others. I think that this is an awesome way to broaden people’s scopes on the world and their own thoughts. It is a great way to share ideas and make connections. Some blogs that I have read by class members have got me thinking about things I never would have before and in dissimilar way then I am used to thinking. As a writer, this makes for great topics and material for my own work. Blog writing is also a great way to get your name out. Since all blogs are published on the Internet, it gives a reference point for writers to keep there essays together on a website that can be seen by anyone.

As true about most things on the Internet, there are legal consequences that are involved in writing blogs if you are not careful. A case in Delaware, John Doe v. Patrick Cahill, made blogs unable to be anonymous. This was because people were writing about specific people and companies that were considered to be defamation, communication of a statement that makes a false claim. This is another indication that writing a blog in the style of a journal essay format can be incriminating.

I will not continue writing blogs. I'm glad that I participated in class and got to write many of my own, including this one, but I think my blog writing days are over. Although it is an interesting way to share ideas, the Internet is a bad device for me. I don’t have many strong opinions about things that are universally interesting. I write about things that I know, not things that I don’t know or that I am two sided on. Unless we were given a topic to write about in class, it was always hard for me to think of something to write about that other people would want to hear my opinion on. I think that trying to write in this way was interesting and fun at times, but I think I'll stick to my physical journal that no body but me reads.