Followup: Boring Is Not Bad

Hi folks. This is a followup to my earlier entry (which I have not edited in any way since posting), where I led off with the deliberately outrageous statement "Blogs are boring."

(I've been posting comments and answering lot of e-mails, so please excuse me as I repeat and steal from myself.)

I
posted this largely to stir things up. Nothing in my post, though, was
meant to call any person, blog or blog entry boring (other than maybe
my own).

As I said, blogs are most interesting to people you
know, the people who know you, and the people you interact with online.
If you've found blogs you like and that you follow -- well, now you
"know" them. They become important and interesting to you.

I didn't mean to belittle anyone or hurt anyone's feelings, so if I did, I apologize.

Here's where I'm coming from.

First off, I am not annoyed now. See? Smiling. I'm smiling:


Next, I am not trying to change how anyone writes, what they write about, whose blogs they read, or anything else.

If you enjoy blogging (and I hope you do), and have found blogs you enjoy reading (which I think you have), nothing I or anyone else says can change that. Which is the way it should be.

Furthermore, when it comes to personal blogs, "boring" is not a bad thing. In fact, boring is good. Here's why:

Very few of us are going to break big news stories in our blogs.

Almost none of us are former Hollywood child actors, or blogging cross-country as we promote our movies.

We're not going to be writing Shakespeare every day or blogging entries from the top of Mount Everest. And you know what?

That's perfectly okay.

Maybe "boring" is the wrong word -- but I don't think mundane, ordinary, normal or regular are much better.

Part of what I'm trying to do is deflate some of the media hype about blogging. Blogging is just something that people do. And we like to do it.

One downside to all this hype is that I've personally heard from people who feel intimidated
and discouraged from starting their own blogs, because they feel
pressure (that they put on themselves) to be "interesting" -- instead
of feeling free to write about what they know, or what happens to them.

Like
I've said elsewhere, no matter how "boring" you might think your own
blog is, there's bound to be someone out there who finds it interesting.

All that I ask right now is that people take a leap of faith and know that I don't actually hate you all, your journals, or my job, and maybe re-read my entry with that in mind.

I did set out to shake things up a bit in the middle of the summer slump, maybe jar a few assumptions and get people to think about why they blog. If the question is "Why do you blog?", there really are no wrong answers.

Having said all that, there were a lot of comments in my blog, and entries in your own Journals, responding to my post and Scalzi's entry talking about my post.

A
bunch of you even took it upon yourselves to post your own "Annoyed"
journal entries, in some cases emulating the pose in my photo
(apologies if I've missed any):

• Omar, the Lord of Butter, started the ball rolling


• Dornbrau has one too and is keeping a list


• Brandy's take (is my bolding that random?)


• Angelia Rian turns to the dictionary


• Christina expresses her boredom in brown


• Kell lists out some interesting boring factoids


• Even the 2-Faced Baseball takes a swing

Also, here's a small sampling of other commentary in your Journals:

• Jodi chimes in


• Tina agrees and disagrees


• Coy's concerns include, "Hey, who made him boss?"


• Hadonfield opines on opinions


• Jeanette holds a poll from across the pond

Lastly, as journaler Sepintx pointed out, if you do a Google search for the phrase "blogs are boring", my entry comes up as #1, thanks to your links.

This was not my intent, but I'll take it.

Again, I'm not one for non-apology apologies -- if I upset you or otherwise insulted you, I'm sorry.

Like I wrapped up the prior entry, so I wind down this one: "Does this mean that people are going to stop blogging? Of course not. And it shouldn't. If we're lucky, maybe people will just stop talking about it so much and just do it."

Thanks -- Joe