I don’t post much. I guess I still haven’t figured out the point of doing it. I don’t know what I would hope to accomplish in posting. I don’t know if I have the time required to keep up with it.
Sometimes during the day at work, in my car, <sometime when I’m not near the computer>, etc. I’ll get ideas for a blog post, but then later I’ll either forget or I’ll decide against posting. Most of the time, my ideas are about some aspect of my life, some recent goings on, etc.
Sometimes I get ideas for a series of posts that would give this blog some direction or a goal of some sort, but overrule those as well.
Sometimes I want to talk about my sociability, or lack thereof, and either explain it away or start a discussion about it. I decide against this too.
Sometimes I want to call out people from my past who made my life a living hell. Then I look my life and see how their efforts and superiority games have failed and decide against this too.
Sometimes I want to seek revenge, and decide against it. Revenge via karma is much more effective/satisfying.
Sometimes I wonder how posting any of these things would make me seem to other people. Would this change the view that people who know me have of me? Would it be a bad first impression for people who don’t know me? Do either of these things matter?
Sometimes I wonder what effect posting would have on me, my life, etc.
I often think that much of what I have to say is already said elsewhere, in a way that is much more eloquent/interesting/funny than what I could compose.
So ok, I’m asking for advice. 
Having read this, would it be safe to conclude that blogging pretty much isn’t for me?
January 28, 2008 at 12:17 pm |
Bah! You are so funny, it is hard to believe you have nothing to say or to share in a blog.
But, I guess if you decide it isn’t for you, we can still be friends.
January 28, 2008 at 3:54 pm |
…for now.
March 19, 2008 at 3:22 pm |
The point of blogging is to generate click through ad $$. You’ve got to get an angle then get some advertising.
March 19, 2008 at 7:03 pm |
I decided to approve that last comment because I find it interesting. If that’s the point (to make money), then hell no I won’t start blogging seriously.
I like the way the comment is written… kinda like “DUH, it’s OBVIOUS the answer is this, and this is how you do it!”
March 19, 2008 at 9:49 pm |
It could be a nice side-effect, though.
WordPress.com doesn’t allow it for wordpress.com-hosted blogs, but if you self-host, it’s pretty easy to enable google adsense. Ads are automatically created. Money is small, and you only get paid out if you get up to $100. But if a perl script on converting a pine addressbook to gmail could earn $2.50 in the 6 months it was up, multiply that by, say, the 1000 blogposts I’ve written sine I started my blog. If each page was even 1/1000th as money-earning as the perlscript page, I’d still be getting a cool $5 a year … and if I’m going to have a blog anyway, that’d be awesome. In reality, it might be more than $5! The fecalphiliacs are an untapped democrapic.
April 22, 2008 at 9:11 pm |
…Hell, since I’m doing so many movie reviews lately, I bet clickthrough dvd purchases would result in some amount of money too. If I could get 50 cents per movie review per year, that would be $50/yr once I write 100 reviews. That’d pay for several month hosting! (Mulls the idea…. Wonders what writing a program to edit all my current blog entries to be updated to include a link pointing to a new domain [so i would hopefully capture some of the people who come to the old blog] would entail…)
Anyway, Greg …. I don’t hear from you much. I’d like to invite you to Twitter. Maybe you could do it from your cell-phone?
April 22, 2008 at 10:32 pm |
Haha I wish. My cell phone is pay as you go, so I have to pay like 10 cents per outgoing text message. Not to mention cell phones are not allowed inside where I currently work (that’s changing though, I just accepted a new job that’s much closer to home… 7 to 10 minute drive, with cell phones allowed). Plus I might have Internet at my desk again! Very good suggestion though, that would enable to to quick-blog my random thoughts.
Who knows, maybe I’ll write a blog post about this current position and what a waste of taxpayer money it is once I am out of it.
April 22, 2008 at 10:34 pm |
Oh yeah, as for not hearing from me much, I’m on IM practically every night.
April 24, 2008 at 8:06 am |
Yea, and if you RSS facebook update statuses and twitter, then you basically get every microblog written by every friend. It’s a whopping 10 seconds a day of mouse-scrolling but I’m actually sort of in touch with everyone a bit more.
The problem with IM is that it deprives 20 minutes out of your day to have a conversation that would take 2 minutes in a spoken format. If I experienced this thing called “boredom” or “needing something to do”, I would chat to fill the void, but here is no void. I’m doing stuff every waking second…
April 24, 2008 at 8:27 am |
Some people use IM not out of “boredom” or “needing something to do”, but to “communicate” or “catch up”. For those of us who don’t blog or twitter much, it’s down to IM, email, actual phone, snail mail, or face-to-face as communication options. Phone sucks because it’s one-on-one and it’s difficult to talk on the phone and communicate with anyone else at the same time. IMing doesn’t lock me into one communication task when I do it and other people can IM at any time without interrupting.
April 24, 2008 at 5:36 pm |
I think you missed my underlying point: As far as catching up goes, it’s the absolute slowest way (besides texting, whichi is IM’ing with a shitty keyboard!). It is the maximum typing, maximum overhead, and minimum reach (only 1 person, maybe 2 if someone is in the other room watching). In terms of considering both effort per byte and byte per second, it is the most work and least efficient.
I’ve seen chats you’ve had with Carolyn, and over the course of 20 minutes, less information is exchanged than would verbally be exchanged in 2 minutes.
But you say, you’re not having a dedicated chat, and you’re doing other things. That means you are generally having to switch windows for each line of text. That overhead adds up to hours, days of wasted time. Not to mention that typing is slower than speaking.
If it’s 1-to-1, the information exchange just isn’t there. It’s good for short messages.
If it’s 1-to-many, typing surpasses speaking. Which is part of why twitter is gaining popularity — it takes the benefits of IM and blogging and combines them. It’s definitely for more asynchronous communication.
But for synchronous communication between 2 people? NOTHING beats a face to face conversation, and after that, nothing beats a voice-to-voice conversation.
Most people can’t type as fast as they speak (I can, but I can’t think as fast as I speak while typing, my brain is the limiter not my fingers), a lot of communiation is nonverbal, tone of voice conveys a LOT .. etc etc etc
I don’t even like IM for URLs (because i have to click them before closing the window, or i “lose” the URL, thus it forces me to not be able to choose when i read it — just like IM communication does.)
I really only open IM when I am bored or looking for people to talk to these days. And then Glen interrupts me and I turn it off again for a month.
April 24, 2008 at 5:38 pm |
But yea, I am not even going to OPEN im if there’s ANY chacne i don’t want to be interrupted, which is USUALLY. When I want to connect, i go to my inbox or my RSS reader. I read people’s updates when *I* want to read them, not when *they* send them (like with IM).
of course, if you NEED to interrupt someone, IM is optimal!
worst thing EVER? my dad IM’ed me, “There?”, and I said “yes”, and then my phone rang. Me answering IMs doesn’t mean i want to answer the phone, dad! Phone is even more interrupty! but if i wanted to have a meaningful chat with him, i’d say “stop typing and call me”. Diff’rent strokes for diff’rent folks
April 25, 2008 at 11:46 am |
It may be slow, but it’s more personal (like a conversation) than a blog. Plus, only the person you are typing to and anybody who happens to be around get to read it. You listed that as a minus while I see it as a huge plus. Why would I want anybody and everybody to be able to read what I type?
And I guess that right there sums up why I don’t blog, twitter, etc. I much prefer personal things to remain personal. Debates about various topics, blogging is great for that. That’s why my posts have all been about topics I want feedback on. My personal life, I don’t want that posted online and I don’t want to create discussion about it, so I keep that to a minimum and only talk about such things in person or on IM.
That’s also why my Myspace page is set up the way it is. I didn’t create that to meet people as I already have a pretty full social life as is. Why did I create it? Good question!
I made my Facebook profile for the purpose of meeting long lost family and it served that purpose well. Now that that’s done?… barely use it at all. OKCupid I initially created to meet a woman, but I met Nicole 2 months after starting that profile so that’s also mostly useless to me now as well. Though I do enjoy looking at profiles on there, seeing the match % and how it really does seem to rate me high with people I find interesting. Either way, I have a pretty full social life, plenty of friends and I see no need to put myself out there online to meet new people or discuss random topics with strangers.
I remember way back in the BBS days, I met some fellow BBSers who were high school seniors (I was a freshman). I told them I like BBSes for the DOOR games and they got on my case, saying that modems should be used first and foremost for communication (I think they meant for meeting people, sharing ideas, etc.). Several years later? Yeah, I can see their point, and I met a couple of my girlfriends online. That was through a chat BBS and the then-equivalent of IMing.
Also, you equate twitter with IMing, but isn’t it just a blog with a txt size limit that gets sent to everyone (or to a list of people)? If so, the audience is the same… people I know and potentially people I don’t know. Plus, what if something happens that I want to share with some friends and not with others? Sure they might have lists, but I don’t want to manage lists and permissions and whatnot when I could just IM or call the person I want to talk to.
April 25, 2008 at 1:40 pm |
>Why would I want anybody and everybody to be able to read what I type?
Because small talk and catching up with N friends requires repeating all the events N times to actually catch everyone up. I don’t know about you, but I get really really tired of repeating myself. Certain things Carolyn had to repeat to so many people (like about her surgery, which I heard at least 10 times over 100 minutes in one camping trip alone) that I would leave the room when the story started, because I can’t stand reruns, hearing something 10 times, and especially repeating something 10 times.
There’s no “lists” or “sending” with twitter, and it is referred to as micro-blogging. I guess you’ve never updated your facebook status either (same thing)…..
April 26, 2008 at 12:34 pm |
On the flipside of that, I don’t ever want to refer people to my blog to find out what I’ve been up to instead of telling them.
I’ve updated Facebook status, but that illustrates my point exactly. Facebook status updates go to everyone on my “list”, which on Facebook is whoever I am friends with on there. Twitter goes out to the world. So either you have a list, which requires management of some sort or you don’t. I don’t want to deal with either scenario.
Stories hit the techie news sites pretty regularly about people who post blogs, pictures, etc., then someone they don’t want seeing it finds it (enemies, potential employers, family (dads, hehe), etc.) and then the info is used to their detriment. And every time, they are so surprised that stuff posted on the Internet can be found by anybody!
April 26, 2008 at 5:55 pm |
I think you might just be plain wrong about the facebook status updates actually being private. I subscribe using RSS, which means Google Reader has access to all that info via a public method. More about that here:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Howell/?p=169
…including all the OTHER feeds they have implemented.
BTW, 17 gigs of MySpace were released via bittorrent, and they were ALL marked private. It’s one of the best leaks ever. I wish there was a way to relate those images to “your friends” and “friends of your friends” automatically — that would be quite powerful
Also, twitter actually has privacy settings so random people can’t follow you or see your tweets — but they fall under the same pitfall as the link I just gave about facebook, assuming those tweets are still available on RSS (which I would think they are).
Of course, RSS feeds only have your most recent items (often some number like 50 or 200 items, you can always WGET the XML file and count), so once the “bad stuff” scrolls off the back of the feed, it isn’t really “out there” any more. If you say something bad, then say 200 good things, and it gets reindexed, generally the bad stuff will no longer be an applicable keyword, and the result will drift into oblivion.
Of course, a “evil” search engine that ignores robots.txt (which I assume facebook, like many sites, uses) could be aggregating this all later.
The main lesson is, you should never put to word anything you don’t want known. Not on facebook, not in your diary, not anywhere.
(I’m not sure what you’re 3rd paragraph is supposed to say about either of us. Neither of us are naive as to be surprised that something we write on the internet might be read by someone else. If you don’t want something to be known, you speak of it, and never write it down, not even in your own diary. So considering that this doesn’t apply to us, I’m not sure how it affects the debate..)
April 26, 2008 at 5:56 pm |
note to self: re-read comments before clicking submit (some redundancy)
April 26, 2008 at 5:58 pm |
Your argument kind of strikes me as analogous to “I don’t want a phone, because anyone could listen in on my conversation” (which is sadly true in this day & age with unwarranted wiretapping). But privacy paranoia doesn’t really have to do with the medium; it has to do with the person using it. Don’t say anything you don’t mind people hearing. I have a lot of trouble wondering how my twitter about a tree falling in my backyard is going to be significant to anybody. I don’t have to say “I’m smoking crack right now!” if I don’t want to…
April 26, 2008 at 5:59 pm |
That is to say, the ability to converse in public does not detriment the ability to converse in public. Metaphorically, Laying out a soapbox and getting on top of it doesn’t mean you can never whisper something in someone’s ear again.
April 26, 2008 at 6:25 pm |
Sorry for the comment barrage, but I also have to point out: Out of Facebook and Twitter, facebook is the one that requires that you use your real name, and then seems to publish this on a publi feed. Twitter you can make up a username — so in effect, considering that, coupled with the fact that twitter does indeed support friends-only lists like Facebook — I would say Twitter is the more private of the 2 sites.