I have come to the conclusion that proper blogging should be pure stream of consciousness - raw, unedited earthy goodness - impossible, but here we go. When we we began the semester I had never blogged before and had only read blogs on the rare occasion my girlfriend pointed me to Gowanus Lounge for a new restaurant in our neighborhood that served deep fried mac 'n cheese balls or to check out my advertising friend Jimbo's blog where he rates the latest annoying commercials. My general impression of blog's and bloggers revolved around a series of questions - Don't you have anything better to do? Do you think anyone really cares about what you do everyday? How pretentious do you have to be? and so on.... Although I was semi-excited to start a blog and reacquaint myself with the modern world (while also learning the lingo that would now allow me to start conversations with the underage girls who managed to be cute enough to get past the bouncer), I was not excited to have to sort through 25 blogs every week about how men are pigs and Billy now likes Judy and it just isn't fair. I decided that I would not reveal any personal or private info about myself, saving others and myself from feeling extremely uncomfortable about my sexual penchant for midgets and mustard - I would stick strictly to class topics.
Three months later, my general feelings for blogs remain mostly unchanged, at least as far as reading goes. I definitely have a new appreciation for what goes into writing/designing a blog. I have to scoff at the notion of the "pure" stream of consciousness blog, and the idea that one can crank out a blog in a 10 minutes in between classes or on a lunch break. Although I'm sure some of my classmates were able to do this, for me this was impossible. Never mind the hours spent on finding funny yet relevant images for my blog, or videos and links that would cleverly match the oh so witty banter I imagined, I found myself spending unhealthy amounts of time being paranoid about every word I wrote. Is that funny or just corny? Do they know that I know this is not a real word or will they think I'm stupid? Is that inappropriate to say in a class setting? Do I sound pretentious? Am I writing too much, am I gonna seem like a teacher's pet or an ass-kisser? Should I publish half of this now and save the other half for later in the week? Does anyone even read my blog anyway? In a lot of ways I felt like a junior high kid again worrying about the social implications of my blog, how I would be percieved by classmates, and constantly comparing myself and my decisions to my peers. I suddenly cared a lot more about what others thought of me. Where as before I understood blogs as random anonymous blatherings to the world, which no one was likely to read or care about - I now see how communities, ideas, and real life interactions form around a blog and how very non-anonymous they are.
The usefulness of blogs for a 21st century lit class or really any class for that matter is huge. I have had a few classes that required interaction through on-line forums and email discussions, but none have even come close to having the direct impact and unique effects on a class that these blogs have. First, they provide an unlimited, unrestrained vessel for expression. The ability to include images, videos, links, etc. makes such a difference in being able to express yourself more easily and more completely. It also gives each classmate a unique personality and makes it so much easier to genuinely care about the ideas and contributions of classmates. It sets a more relaxed and open tone for discussion to happen and makes it less forced and awkward to discuss class topics both in and out of class. It was meaningful and did not seem like busywork at all – it opened up ideas, interpretations, and gave a lot of insight in terms of my world view approaching texts versus others’. It forced me to agree or disagree with people and their comments and prepared me to defend my opinions in class. It also cut down on a lot of wasted class time – people were ready to jump into heated debate right away each night, which in my experience is very rare.
I was definitely surprised by the social aspect of blogging - how much a blog can create who you are in class and how you are perceived. I was quietly very judgmental of my peers and what they said in their blogs - it definitely had a strong effect on what credence I gave their comments in class. Right or wrong, I completely made assumptions and judgments about people's lives, personalities, and intellect based on their blogs. I was also surprised by my interest and fascination with reading every single blog, from every classmate. Although I rant about being annoyed at the gossip, way too personal info, and irrelevant blogging - I could not stop myself from reading it and forming opinions about it. Similar to House of Leaves I felt if I didn’t read everything I would miss some very important bit of information. I struggled with whether or not to read others’ blogs before I had read the text, fearing it would affect my reading and opinions, but eventually came to the conclusion that it mostly helped me to be more attentive in my reading as most blogs were substantive offering good questions and points of confusion with very little plot summary. Often I held off on writing my blog until I had finished reading the selected text, somewhat fearful I would write something really naïve, and also waiting to see if my peers figured out something I hadn’t. This is something to take into consideration when structuring the class in the future, it might be less stressful to break up the 3 blogs/week into at least two sections of text – I think people would blog earlier.
Something I would do differently with my blog if I did it again would be to include a lot more "not necessarily relevant" information similar to a lot of the stuff that Tom did. Posting songs, weird videos, upcoming local events, etc. definitely kept me coming back to Tom's blog regardless of his opinions and commentary about the texts we were reading. I want to say I would try to "instigate" more - specifically rile up a person about a topic, address people specifically in a post and call them out on how their post was full of complete BS, or solicit responses to a specific question, etc. I learned in the last class how to imbed youtube videos in a blog, so I would definitely do that more. It would be funny to create some absolutely ridiculous persona through the blog, similar to Steven Colbert on the Colbert Report, Borat, Ali G, or Sarah Palin, and try to always write through that lens. I think it would be great to develop some consistent traditions in each post, or each week - like a "question of the day" or song, book, movie recommendations, or bad joke of the week, etc. I think that would go along way towards not only getting people to your blog, but also creating more inter-blog commentary. Peace. BS
