Ten Reasons You Shouldn’t Blog

By TRB

Are you really sure you want to share all those thoughts of yours with the world? Isn't that what got you in trouble in the first place? But everyone is doing it aren't they? Well, it couldn't be that difficult could it? It is not like it's real journalism, where you really have to have writing talent, and, as they used to put it, a nose for news. Blogging is something your next door neighbor can do, you know the guy who is always falling off the ladder every year he cleans his gutters? Maybe your golfing buddy blogs. He can't golf to save his life. But he blogs to tell others his "secrets" to good golfing. Your landscaper blogs. Seriously. He probably figures: Hell, I have a computer - why not write a blog? Well , I can think of at least ten good reasons why you shouldn't. I could think of more really, but we'll stick to this format.

10 Good Reasons Not to Blog

1. Blogs are forever. When you set your thoughts to words they don't have to be good thoughts, they don't have to be thoughts that make sense, they don't even have to meet the rather loose definition of thought itself. In fact, they can be empty, they can be nonsensical, they could even be illegal, or some craziness that could ruin your relationship with someone you care for or even your marriage. And you can not take them back. On another level, a blog can be, and often is a throw-away kind of writing, like something that just came to you and seemed profound, but in the light of day or sobriety was really just verbal debris. And yet you have written it as a blog and it will follow you until the day you die. Remember when you first began to write, how awful it was, how you later discovered those illiterate ramblings and threw them in the trash or the fireplace, confident they wouldn't follow you through life? Well, your blogs will still be on line while you are in the ground.

2. The money is terrible if there is any money at all. And the lack of funds is always so mysterious. It is as though many thousands of people across the country are involved in an enterprise for which hardly any of them are paid. Now, how can that be? Obviously someone is making a buck somewhere. But, in most cases it is not getting to the writer. Maybe some nice person is saving all the money for bloggers and will gladly release it to us just when we're in need of it. Yeah, that must be it..

3. Then there is the word "blog," itself. Even though I know it is derived from the words "web-log," and has nothing to do with throwing up or vomit, it still seems like an exceptionally realistic sounding word for the vomiting of words from a writer's mind onto a page. And then when the writer is through vomiting, you might read those words, and the word "blog" would likely just jump from you lips as you described what you had just done. Can anyone think of a better word for an upchuck of words? Really.

4. It is more difficult to change your opinion than it is in a newspaper story. I don't know how it is that blogs are both reviled and chiseled in stone at the same time. But it seems as though blogs came down from the Mount, and readers hate it when your opinion tends to morph a little with each new one. Maybe it is that your readers are sort of staring over your shoulders from this place called the "comments section." Picture that at a newsprint newspaper. Maybe just a bit down the hallway from the city room, sits a roomful of critics waiting for the reporter's copy as soon as he or she finishes it, maybe even before the editor has seen it.. To the blogger, this is the local readership, or I guess audience would be a better word - because they really are right there. Some of them have every blog you have ever written on a certain subject at their fingertips. If you have contradicted yourself or if you seem to be getting a little spongy on an issue you once felt more strongly about, they will know. Which means you will know, usually within minutes.

5. Everything is not important or interesting or worthy of a blog. This presents a problem in relation to the number of interesting and important things in this world, especially when you consider that there are already thousands of newspaper and broadcast media out there, along with half a million bloggers, that's right, as many bloggers as there are lawyers, and that is only in the United States. You see, there are enough "coverer's" to cover everything and then some. Now we have too much coverage. I suppose if dogs began to talk overnight, some of these "news people" might be kept busy for a while. But until that happens, let's just say we've got it covered. Over-covered, really.

6. Every experience can become a blog, and eventually will, even if it is a self-serving ad. Are you really interested in your local movie theater's blog, for example? Do we expect them to say something critical of their features? Of course not. Maybe a newspaper movie reviewer would, but even that can be less credible than you might think. What has happened to "word of mouth?" Could it be that we just don't speak with our fellow citizens anymore? We blog our feelings about everything to everybody, from pasta recipes to good sexual positions, we blog it all out there. Until one day, you look up from your dinner at the person sitting across from you and you think, "I wonder what the blog is on her?"

7. Politics and blogs just do not seem to mix. In fact, most of the mysterious ones who traffic in blogs would just as soon not deal with politics at all. Left or Right, it doesn't matter. The real question is, will someone bother to read it and maybe activate one of the 10 or so ads we've managed to squeeze in around it? "Give me liberty or give me death" went out a long time ago. There are now at least a million ways to spend your money and the blog traffickers want you to try them all. You see, to some in the business community, a blog is not a literary work but rather a device, a kind of bait to use to get your attention onto something that cost money. So a blogger, or at least many bloggers, are just going out there to set the traps, provide the bait. Write the blog on how wonderful it is to spend two weeks in St. Croix. Of course it really would be wonderful to spend two weeks in St.Croix. A blogger's job is to get you there even if you can't really afford it.

8. Blogs can follow you around through life creating problems between yourself and your children, in-laws, business associates, your boss, even your religious group if you have one. These problems are generated by "controversy," which can be anything. For example, I once wrote a column in a newspaper about the spate of bad weather we had been having. In return I received at least 100 letters, all negative, from readers involved in the tourist trade. "Stop writing that garbage; no one will come here." "Don't you have an editor who tells you what your can write?" "Why don't you move to Hawaii if you don't like this weather." I never saw that coming. Just as I never anticipated the outcry when I wrote an article about a certain dog of a certain breed which had virtually bitten a young man's face off. Dog lovers and cat lovers will not tolerate anything negative about their favorite animals, no matter how badly they sometimes behave. Bloggers learn about crazy controversy the hard way.; it just falls on them. I was lucky. I learned about it a long time ago as a journalist. Still, that doesn't make it any less irritating.

9. Blogging becomes too much a part of your life. This can represent a real threat to your emotional wellbeing. All of us would like to know a variety of people; it is what makes life interesting. The blogger, however, risks becoming anti-social if he or she can't get their minds away from their blogs. Example: You are out with a person you really want to impress., when suddenly you find yourself saying, "Oh, you want to go to the Museum of Science? Well, I did a blog about that . . ." Seriously, it is over before you know it. Pretty soon your only friends are other bloggers, which is not good. If you want to write about life, you have to be in it. If you are surrounded by others who want to write about life, too, you have two choices - you can run like hell or you can stay put and hope to steal an idea for a blog from another blogger.

10. From my vantage point one of the best reasons not to blog is this "ten best" formula itself.. The Ten Best Lead Guitarists, The Ten Best Vacations, The Ten Best Legal Drugs, etc. You might be on your death bed before you finally ask the obvious question: "Why does it always have to be ten?"