One of the Great Unread
by dharmapunk
Hi, my name is Shawn and I’m one of the “Great Unread”:http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2006/08/the_great_unrea.php.
I remember watching…I think it was Dennis Miller’s old show on CNBC, back when he had on cool guests like “Virginia Postrel”:http://www.dynamist.com/ and back when I got extended cable.
On this particular episode, he had on a panel of bloggers, one of who was Xeni Jardin, of Boing Boing fame. Something Xeni said has stuck with me for a while now. She said, “Blogs are the voice of the people!”
I knew right away that there was something wrong with her statement. “Yeah, it’s easy to say that when you’re blog gets a gajillion hits a day,” I thought to myself. At that point I was pretty sure that a lot of the blog hype was just that. Hype.
But it’s easy to be bitter and complain. The problem is that many bloggers, sick and tired of never being heard, start complaining, start ratcheting up the bitterness to 11. Those folks slowly devolve into a caricature of themselves, a one-dimensional homunculus that, ultimately, isn’t very interesting.
Having to decide between that and toil in obscurity, I’ll take the obscurity, thank you very much. I just wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I spent all my blogging time trying to pick fights with people or take radically different stances, just to get a rise out of someone here in the comments or through a link from another blog. Sure, okay, I’ve done it in the past (if you think I’m going to link to an example, dream on ;).
Besides, there is a very real freedom that comes from being one of the Great Unread. If you become popular, you acquire an audience…one that expects something out of you every day. I can’t do that. Some days, I’m just spent. Because I make my living as a copywriter, putting pixel to ethernet is the last thing I want to do when I come home sometimes. Maybe I would just like to have a beer and watch Mythbusters or 24.
Also, I would have to play the same tune over and over. I can throw down a political post, follow it up with something technical, then go for the jugular with a hockey rant. I’ve got no one to alienate.
Would I like more readers and more comments? Sure. But blogging is fun and if I have to start kissing up to A-listers or sending mass emails through the underground blogosphere every time I post something new, it would stop being fun and start being more like work.
I need less of that, don’cha know.
*Update:* Some criticism from “Stowe Boyd”:http://www.stoweboyd.com/message/2006/08/a_house_divided.html.
~np. Atomic Opera – Freak Show~
