Audience.

I enjoy reading blogs. Heck, I enjoy reading, period, and with the technological surge of the 21st century, there is always a blog right at my fingertips worth reading. I enjoy all sorts of blogs; I read techy blogs, political blogs, news blogs and personal blogs. Of course, I have my own personal blog here and one of the reasons I read the personal blogs of others is because I like to see how others are living their life, which is along the same reasoning as to why I write in this blog. I like to write and I like to share about life, so it makes sense to do both sides of this sort of thing.

It’s no secret that the likes of Twitter and Facebook and similar sites have taken over the personal blogosphere. It’s kind of like the way computers and email took over sitting down and writing a letter by long-hand, it’s a lot easier to belch out a witty one liner in 140 characters or less instead sitting down in front of a computer and actually composing something that involves multiple paragraphs, multiple sentences or even multiple syllables. Nevertheless, a 140 character tweet is not going to solicit the same level of emotional response as a well composed blog entry that utilizes descriptive prose, colorful phrases and the time and effort required to convey a complete thought. This is one of the reasons that I believe society now applauds mediocrity as if it was something brilliant. We expect less.

I have been slowly watching the personal blogs I follow fall by the wayside. I used to follow nearly four dozen blogs back in the middle of the ’00s. Occasionally I’ll see a blog entry from someone that hasn’t written in months and then I’ll realize that someone has hacked into their blog account and is sending out random nonsense. Occasionally non-Alphanumeric characters will be used. I don’t know why but I find a blog entry composed in Arabic characters to be whimsical looking. It’s probably because I have no idea how to read right to left or any way of knowing what the characters mean. Sometimes ignorance can be whimsical.

There are still a dozen or so personal blogs that I enjoy reading and that I have an interest in. I look forward to crossing paths with those that I haven’t met in person yet. A few years ago Earl and I went to a blogger gathering in New York; it gave us the opportunity to meet others that liked to write and more importantly, it let us experience Bear Hill in Central Park, complete with roller skating grandma. That was a cool experience. I really like connecting with others, though I can be shy about it at first. (Once I open my mouth, though, I’m hard pressed to shut up.) I have to admit that I would rather meet a regular reader of this blog in person instead of some random person that friended me on Facebook.

Speaking of Facebook, I’ve been pulling back on my participation there again. It’s mostly because I’m more of a Twitter guy than a Facebook guy, but it’s also because of that SchoolFeed thingee. I’m suddenly getting notes from people that I don’t know that I didn’t go to school with. Some woman in Idaho sent me a box of chocolates through this SchoolFeed thing. This was disappointing because: a. I have never been in Idaho, b. the woman was in her 70s and c. there was no real box of chocolates, only the virtual kind. I don’t enjoy virtual chocolate. It’s like the way I like my men; I want to be able to lick them in person, I don’t want to have to settle for a lick of the screen and visualize something.

That’s just weird.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad