People at work the other day were commenting that blogging and bloggers are dumb, pathetic, or nonsensical. "Don't you have any REAL friends? Why do you have a need to talk to people you don't know on the internet?"
Note that they weren't saying this to me, personally. They were using the common, collective "you."
So, I know why I blog. But why do you blog?
I must admit I always thought bloggers were, you know, the losers who lived in their parents basements kind of people. Until I joined Ravelry and started looking at some fellow Ravelers blogs. That's when I decided to start my admittedly pathetic attempt at blogging. I do consider a handful of people on the net my real friends. Not all, but a good handful. Let's face it - the world isn't what it was 30 or 40 years ago, people are a lot more transient, fewer of us live in the towns we grew up in - so as for real friends they move, we move and they become internet friends. Also I would have made fun of someone meeting up with people from the internet - but have since met up with 4 really fun women who live in my county and knit. One is becoming a fast best friend.
ReplyDeleteSo bottom line - I think they haven';t actually done anything like that online - it takes an interest - knitting in my case - to actually find people who you'd want to socialize with on the net, and it has become my opinion that a large number of people don't actually have any interests - except maybe gossip, talking other people down etc.
To communicate with friends I don't get to see often enough, to keep track of my knitting & spinning & such and to meet other fiber people... I agree with Ria that part of the allure is that my friends and I have nearly all moved (far away) at least once in the last ten years.
ReplyDeleteIt's also nice to have someplace to share all of the photos I take, especially if you count Flickr as blogging.
To avoid boring my friends and husband with the painful minutiae of my knitting, quilting, and sewing...and to share said minutiae with people who actually are interested--and there are some. I love to write, and so my blog is a creative outlet for me. Occasionally I even manage to provide good information to people--almost a year after its release, people are still reading my review about Verena's inaugural issue--and my blog allows me to share my designs. I'm not a talented/experienced enough designer to sell designs, but thanks to my blog (and Ravelry) I can still share them.
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