Blogs Go Online Not On Paper

More than 100 million blogs in eight years is crazy. If you’re either Mr. Tangen, or one of his 10th grade students that did the homework, you know what I’m talking about. If you randomly came across my Blog, you probably don’t. This is one of the points Sara Boxer makes in her writing.

Blogs are like inside jokes, if the joke’s with you, then you understand. If it’s not, you’re lost. Reading a blog and not knowing what it’s about, is like running in to the middle of a conversation.

Putting a bunch of blogs together to form a book? I didn’t think it was difficult, after all, you could just Google Blog search a specific topic and gather a bunch of blogs. Considering the fact I’ll be in the hospital for two more hours, I decided to give it a try. I wnt back to our old 9th grade blog page and tried to put some blogs together. I hope I don’t get in trouble for using some excerpts without permission. My attempt for putting blogs together is the one that follows.

Excerpts of blogs about Job:

From my blog entry:

Wisdom In Job

“Job is a mixture of many things, it talks about faith, temptation, fear, anger, many values and feelings humans experience everyday. The chapter I liked the most was 28, in which the translation talked about wisdom, and where to find it. It gave great examples, which made me realize we have a lot of wisdom. We know where to get gold, how to molt brass and how to make bread. Such simple things had to be discovered at one point, and I think that as soon as they were discovered, they were considered some great invention.”

Where does gold, molt brass and bread fit in with wisdom?

From Maria Jose Fabre’s blog entry:

Infinite Loss

“At the end of Job, God speaks to Job and explains how he can not be always dependent on his people’s misery, how he must not meddle with human business and manipulate fortune. God speaks how everything has cause, not necessary his. In opposition, Elie Wiesel leaves the interpretation of God personal and purely Eliezer’s.”

How is the Elie Wiesel relevant?

From Ethan Metzler’s blog entry:

Job’s Worth

The entire predicament, the cause of Job’s wealth and prosperity as well as his loss and suffering were a result of Job’s faith. He was as close to perfect as a man can get in God’s eyes and he was well off before the Satan intervened. After the catastrophes set against Job he almost lost all trust and faith in God. His friends unsuccessfully attempted to comfort and open his eyes to the truth. Eventually Elihu was the only one who could do so. Once Job opened his eyes, he begged forgiveness, promised redemption and understood the purpose of the test.

What test is he talking about?

It’s either impossible, or really difficult to make 2 blogs or more make sense. These blogs were all about the same topic, but contain many different ideas and analysis. Assuming you were in my class last year, we all knew this topic quite well. Imagine not knowing what Job is about. You wouldn’t understand absolutely anything.

Another problem with mixing blogs is the fact that they are all done for different reasons. Why do people blog? As Boxer mentions,

“Bloggers assume that if you're reading them, you're one of their friends, or at least in on the gossip, the joke, or the names they drop.”

I’m guessing some people write blogs because they lend a friendly ear. A blog is an open space to write whatever you feel like writing about. So what if no one reads it? So what if no one understands it? At least the sensation of being heard is there. As the writer says,

"Now that fame and links are one and the same, there are bloggers out there who will do practically anything—start rumors, tell lies, pick fights, create fake personas, and post embarrassing videos—to get noticed and linked to."

People need to think they're heard of. Of course, there are others who write blogs as assignments or as a hobby. The reason why you write a blog affects the way you write it. For example:

You're putting baseball blogs together. You come across 3 of them.

The first one is written by Tom. He's in college, studying to be a spokesman at sporting events.

The second blog you find is by Lauren. She dated a baseball player once and is desperate to show people how this sport ruins relationships.

The third one is by John, a fanatic baseball follower. His blog narrates games and talks about how incredible it is.

The topic's the same, but they are completely different. Not only would you find a difference in opinions, the reason why these people wrote the blog affect the way they did it.

I agree with Sara Boxer when she says writing an anthology of blogs is a "dreadful idea for a book". Blogs must be kept online and separate from each other. Making an anthology of blogs would generate confusion and would take part of the essence of blogs away. After all, blogs are best when kept online.