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Blogging As A Form Of Therapy
wellington writes "According to an AOL survey, blogs are more likely to deal with personal matters than politics or current events, and nearly 50% of bloggers see the activity as a form of therapy."
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Nearly 50% of the blogs in existence are not interesting for an overwhelming majority of people is what i read from this. Thats not to say that all the non-personal blogs aren't just as bad. As Leo Laporte talked about on TWiT this week, Blogging is quickly becoming a serious problem with Google, and all the other search engines. Search just about any news topic, and you might find yourself with a blog talking about it, the source of material from said blog is another blog, and the chain will continue until you get to one of a few websites. I think that Google might be going in the right direction with their blog search, if they can use it to eliminate all blogging sites from searches which do not wish to return results from blogs. This must happen for search engines to be as easy and timeless as they have been in the past unless the novelty of blogging wears off, but who knows when that will happen.
Blogging For One
The headline of the article says it all, and I'm glad those blogs people write about themselves are doing something good for SOMEONE. I find personal blogs that just constantly run on with someone's personal life to be the dullest reading. 99% of people do the same shit, feel the same guilt and address the same issues as all the other personal blogs out there.
And everybody feels different. Maybe they should all look hard at each others blogs and see how much people have in common.
Not that I'm complaining - the non-personal blogs, ones that write about technology, wider life, news, politics, and various other cool stuff makes up for the rest. As for me, I'll stick to whining on slashdot from time to time as my therapy.
Then...don't post them? Is Slashdot really that short on story submissions? I submitted a story for the humor section a few days ago about laser-scribed chicken eggs that will "fight terrorism", and it was rejected within an hour of submission.
Gave me the distinct impression the queue was full of really good stories. I mean, what's funnier than barcoding eggs with a laser, so terrorists don't fuss with them? We like lasers, yes? :-)
Please help metamoderate.
'That Is Soo 1950': Diary/Journal
'That Is Soo 2002': Blogging
'That Is Soo 2004': Podcasting
'That Is Soo Right Now': Video Blogging / Video Casting
'That Is Soo 2020': Streams of Conciousness downloaded directly From your conciousness
'That Is Soo NEVER': Reading/Watching/Listening/uploading them.
Blogs have empowered anyone with the ability to write about anything. Seeing as how harsh and demanding our society has become, I personally feel that it's not very surprising that so many blogs revolve around personal issues.
As someone who has a long history of suffering from Clinical Depression I know how healing it can be to be able to "bitch at an anonymous audience". Hell, just the simple fact that a lot of my close friends read my blog is a big help. The oldest form of therapy as well is just talking about how you feel, and a blog is certainly able to do that - albeit in a kind of one-way form, but none the less it gives you the power to ventilate your thoughts.
Blogs don't have to be grand on a scale. A lot of bloggers come of with some weird kind of delusion of grandeur, they write about all kinds of pompous stuff instead of writing about the really interesting things - and then they get bored and tired when they're not immediately greeted with a flood of comments about how awesome they are. Me, I have a little different approach. I write MY thoughts, and primarily it's just for ventilation of my windy head. If people like it, great. If people don't, then please move along, no need to submit a comment about how my writing sucks or something like that.
My blog often revolves around every-day things, or when the mood goes south I tend to write about that. If people aren't interested it's not my problem since I don't need to please everyone who reads my blog. I have my friends, and over the last year I've attracted a small but dedicated following who read my ravings and rantings so obviously there's something interesting there.
I enjoy large posteriors and I cannot prevaricate.
Who's said writing about news/politics/life in general can't be therapeutic in one way or another? Hell, I rarely write about myself or my feelings in my blog (yes, I have one). Yet the blog entries are always about something else than they seem to be about: they can be either not-really-saying-what-I'm-saying, or just motivated by how I'm feeling at the moment. But just because I'm not ranting about, say, how lonely I am or how bad my life sucks (neither of these necessarily apply to me; just picking two random topics that seem to be quite popular) it doesn't mean I'm not trying to "get something out".
And I do belive I'm not the only one doing this.
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
Well, if anything, Blogs as journals are great historically. For example, I have my Great grandmother's journal, but I honestly can't read her handwriting.
As dry as many blogs are, wouldn't it however be interesting to read a blog from colonial US times, or Napoleanic times etc? Even if they are just inane day to day things.
I think that keeping a journal is great, electronic or paper. What I can't stand are people who are upset that no one is reading their blog, when no one listens to them at the office/home etc....
And something that is great about the internet is that there may only be 2 other people in your city with the same fascination with BeanieBabies/Chrysler LeBarons/Tonenail collecting as you, but on the internet, there may be hundreds. So I guess my point is, it doesn't matter what the subject of the blog is, if it is written in an interesting way/with an interesting take.
In conclusion- keep a journal! Sometimes I wish that I did, as I wouldn't mind seeing what my thoughts were 5, 10,15 years ago etc...
And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
Why should this be such a surprise? Blogging is like writing in a journal, except it is online. Writing of any kind can be a form of therapy, why should blogging be any different?
I really don't understand why people make such a big damn deal about blogging. It's just an extension of journal writing in that it is published online, and as for it being a different kind of website, it is just a content management system used as a journal. Can somebody please tell me what the big deal is? Are the statistics in the article supposed to mean anything?
Yes Bill, but your site is interesting to an outside observer, and I am sure even more so to those who enjoy the things you do (like your geocaching) and people who know you personally. Plus, it is well written.
Slashdot isn't a blog in that it is a conversation. Think about real life. Having converastion is much more interesting than listening to one person drone on and on and on ad infinitum. Most blogs are like the obnoxious person droning on and on.
By the way- how is married life?
And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
What I find worse is that it seems someone is "hijacking" my blog by copying all of MY entries into his / her blog.
I have no idea WHY they are doing this (they are still linking back to me though).
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
and now it's blogs.
....
Same need met, fairly similar concept, and in those times London and NYC had postal delivery five times a day, allowing one to share notes and such as well.
Mind you, back then that was the technology. This is similar in some ways, but not that surprising.
Next we'll bring back the Jet Pack as personal transportation device, or personal Steam Locomotives (we have a 200+ year supply of coal in the US, even if oil/gas are rapidly disappearing)
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The phenomenon even has its very own word. I'm shocked, shocked that no one has mentioned it yet.
Who is actually the weaker individual, the person who pretends they have no weaknesses, or the person who is strong enough to accept that they have some weaknesses and maybe as a result is able to do something about them?
The person who can admit it is stronger, I think. It takes strength to admit failures or weaknesses honestly - but those admissions allow for growth and wisdom. For some reason it is pretty clear that, as a whole, it is not good to admit failure. Politicians, for example, go very far out of their way to make it appear that they had no choice in a bad decision rather than own up to it having just been a lousy idea in the first place.
I've been watching a show on Discovery channel called Going Tribal. I highly encourage everyone to check it out. The host of the show seeks out a different tribe or other more "primitive" people to spend a month or two with living as they do and undergoing some kind of ritual or cultural thing. It is very interesting to see the kinds of bonds those people have with each other vs. how even close families out here in "modern" society tend to operate.
An episode I saw recently had the host undergoing a ritual that essentially made him a man in the eyes of the tribe. It involved taking a drug and having many ceremonies and dances designed to promote hallucinations in a controller manner. There were at least five very important aspects to this ritual. 1) the entire village was in on it and had a role to play in the process of welcoming this new man into the world which included dances and moral support. 2) the drug was a hallucinogen which often results in introspective trips rather than paranoid ones. 3) the elder men who had done this all before were always with him to guide him through and slowly mold the hallucinations into a specific format. 4) there was a rebirth ceremony while he was still high on the drug which involved being born again in a small river - I'm sure this had a pretty profound effect on him given his state of mind at the time. 5) and perhaps the single best symbolic gesture of this whole thing was, while coming down off the high, the villagers erected a tree in the middle of camp surrounded by bushes. The bushes, he was told, were his problems in life of the past and the future. He was then instructed to break some of the branches of the bush. As he did so, half the village men swarmed out from behind the bushes and violently tore up the remaining leaves and branches as a show of support - the entire village was here to help solve his problems of the past as well as the future.
I just don't see that kind of commitment to each other in our society as a whole. There's the occasional appearance of someone who's so selfless and genuinely caring that it's hard to ignore, but in general I think even close modern families are far more disconnected than this tribe of "primitives." I think with all of our rules of society, big cities, and technology most of us have forgotten what it's really all about and why we're all here. And the saddest thing of all is that, in my case, I can see the benefits of a simpler life with a closer bond with my fellow human - and yet I'm very uncomfortable with the idea. I tend to avoid social gatherings and keep to myself. When I go out with my fiancee, I'd rather it just be the two of us and am not at all a fan of hanging out with a group. Somehow I've come to not trust groups. That's a sad thing because I can sit here, by myself, and very much see the benefit and potential joys of being involved in a truly connected society.
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
I'm just worried that venting through blogs will give people enough immediate relief to forget to stand up and change things. Could blogs be a pacifier? I know that I complain about stuff on my blog that I should instead be working to change (my university and how shitty it is, for instance).
He actually specifically lists a number of places you cannot link to his blog from, and among that list is slashdot. Yes, I'm serious.