What if we’re all alone?
When I googled, ‘What’s the point of blogging?’ my laptop conjured up about 5,600,000 results in round 0.36 of a second. ‘Why bother blogging?’ turns up 73,300,000 results. ‘Why I blog,’ 2,930,000,000. ‘Should I blog?’ 5,060,000,000. Apparently this is an area which is preoccupying the world. So, in a quest to work out just what is the point of blogging, or if, indeed, there is any point to it at all, I’ve started a blog.
To be honest, that’s not quite true. The last bit, that is, about the quest. Everything else is straight off Google so it must be true. Right? The real reason I’ve started a blog is because I have to. No-one’s twisting my arm or anything, but the truth is I’m doing a course, and part of the course involves writing a blog, and if I don’t do it, then I won’t get a certificate. But a quest sounds more heroic, so perhaps, in celebration of the blogosphere, we should all suspend disbelief and imagine a quest.
The problem is though, that in that last sentence we come up against one of the stark realities of blogging. Not in the heroic quest, or in the literary suspension of disbelief, but in that little, unassuming plural pronoun and its quiet, little intensifying all. We write a blog to be read, we work on the assumption that it will be, we speak of what “we should all” do. But what if no-one’s reading? What if no-one’s out there? What if we’re all alone?
What's the point of Blogging? 
I think that’s the reason of blogging, to figure out if you are alone or not!! For me the question in “Why bother blogging?” is “because it is very interesting, I love it”!! if no-one’s reading?? Pretend they do!! just my opinion 🙂
Great advice for life generally Eleni. Cheers
How very existentialist Hannah… 😉
Maybe I was having a Nietzsche moment… 😉
I can honestly state that I am currently NOT ALONE, which means I should do some work rather than trying to fiddle with the Blogoshpere
Great, great opening post here…Erm. Yes. We know we’re not alone. It’s just whether someone else stumbles across what we make and share or not…also it strikes me that we find them medium which suits us and this changes over time…for some it’s the absolute centre of work (LinkedIn) play (FBook, Twitter) somewhere in between (FBook, Twitter). But whether people listen or simply notice in passing or if at all….ok yes very existentialist and worthy of more thought…one way is to think about ancient forms -diary/letter/memo and map those experiences and practices through time/through your life.
Ancient forms such as the diary/letter (and they really do seem ancient these days, don’t they?) are an interesting comparison. Diary and letter writers, particularly those in the public eye, seem to make a conscious decision about whether their words are genuinely private, for the intended recipient only, or really for a wider public audience. It’s a strange thing to do: write a letter to an individual, with one eye on the rest of the world. I wonder if there are bloggers who do the same thing in reverse…
@ Jon Millington
Work is overrated… but then maybe so is blogging
Hi Hannah
I guess blogging is a public diary…. Which facebook kind of is too…. If I was “travelling ” maybe I’d blog .. When I did travel letter writing was a big part of it…. And receiving replies via poste restante . But I m not sure I would blog because it would create an extra pressure to be entertaining which somehow means you have to “write” rather than just write. X. Like now really I am just saying hello cos I like you. X
“Write” rather than write… that’s an interesting idea. Do we ever really just write? But I’m very pleased that you chose to just say hello on my blog xxx