Great Debates: Why Blog?

A few posts ago I wrote that I was considering ending this blog. I got an anonymous comment, possibly from the same person who had commented on the lack of original comment earlier in the week. The actual comment was:

"You have things to say but you are hiding it from the society and I don't know why you are so scared about it. Spit it out and it will be interesting!!!"

I thought that my comments had expressed my own particular view of the world fairly accurately, but I can understand why readers might think I am just rehashing the news. And that brings me to one of the great debates: Why do people blog?

Judging by John Chow Dot Com (http://www.johnchow.com/), some bloggers do it to make money. To be honest, I have read a lot of posts about using one's blog to make money and I still have no idea what they are talking about. While this may be a good option for bloggers with tens of thousands of hits, it is really unimportant to someone with a small audience like SilentGriot.

Another position is that bloggers do it because it makes them feel important. The argument goes that bloggers enjoy the illusion of being a real journalist or writer without having to go through the normal channels. By commenting on news stories or supporting a particular political agenda or preaching their particular religion, they feel like they are somehow making a difference.

I've read blogs, mainly of a political nature, that really do appear to see themselves as speakers on a podium, but the majority of blogs that I've seen are written by ordinary people which brings me to a third explanation: people blog because they do not want to be ordinary. By maintaining a blog, people can feel as if their views matter and their thoughts count. In today's increasingly homogenizing world, everyone needs to feel a little unique. Blogs are just one way of being an individual.

But I think my favourite explanation for why people blog is even more simple. Like me, I think most people blog as a means of keeping in touch with people they have moved away from, physically or mentally. I live half a continent away from my family, so making the blog available to them is an easy way to share what I am doing or what I am thinking. And when you are by nature a bit secretive and reclusive as I am in my personal life, blogging permits you to talk about things that you would never talk about face-to-face or over the telephone.

In the end, I don't think it really matters why people blog, it just matters that they do. Blogging may just be the twenty-first century means for attempting to connect with the world around us.