Sean Carton's Bad Blog

Monday, March 28, 2005

The Bad Blogger Manifesto

I will post what I want, when I want, for whom I want.
I will not take ads. Nothing against ads, but the hassle with dealing with them and the ugliness they bring isn't worth the effort.
I will not be an outlet for press releases. If you want me to flack for you, pay me.
I will not put my life on hold to keep this up. I already have a job. I don't need another that doesn't pay.
I will listen to nuts. I like nuts.
I will not argue my points. Go ahead and comment, but you ain't changing my mind.
I will not worry too much about punctuation, spelling, or grammar. If you don't like it, read something else. You gotta pay me to worry about stuff like that.
I will not look at my stats. Ever. If I wanted to worry about circulation, I'd start a real publication.
I will not worry about what my employer thinks. I happen to like my employer, but this is MY blog, damnit!
I will not not worry about being boring. Or interesting. I'm not writing this to entertain anyone.
I will not worry about "trackbacks" or "blogrolls" or "permalinks" or any of that other stuff. I've got enough details in my life.
I will not hide the fact that I'm a geek. Or can be really uncool. Or might be interested in stuff you don't think is cool. It's not worth the energy.
I will be honest and will not edit myself to make anyone happy. When I write for pay, I'll worry about editing.
Trendiness is for people who lack imagination. If it's been covered somewhere else ad nauseum, I'm not going to waste electrons.

9:55:32 AM

Bad Bloggers Rule

Hello. My name is Sean and I'm a bad blogger.

Yes, the first step to recovery is admitting that you have a problem and I, it seems, have a problem with keeping this thing up. I'd like to chalk it up to any number of lame excuses-- schedule, workload, the number of projects I'm juggling, my side gigs-- but I'm not going to. That's just way too easy. No, the reason that I haven't been keeping this thing up is because I just got bored with it. But I've only got myself to blame for that. Here's why.

See, when I started this thing I really just wanted to use it to keep in touch with my friends back in Baltimore after I'd left to take my new job in Philly. It seemed like a reasonable (if obviously egotistical) thing to do, sort of like a never ending Christmas letter to my friends. And while it wasn't always that interesting, at least it was honest and sometimes thoughtful, and worked a lot more like a conversation rather than a publication. I'd have a day, I'd write about it, and my friends would comment on it, usually via email but occasionally on the blog. Nothing Earth-shattering, nothing I was going to get rich doing, but amusing (at least for me!) and kind of fun to do.

Then I got delusions of grandeur.

I looked around the Web and saw all the "here's a nifty link" (HANL, from here on out) blogs out there and thought to myself "heck, I could do that!" After all, after running an early proto-blog about software for almost 5 years I figured that hell, I should get back in the game. So I dug around. Read other blogs. Found nifty links. Posted them...

...and quickly stiffened up from boredom.

Why? Because with a few notable exceptions (such as bOING bOING and we make money not art ), most of the HANL sites are really lame after you read them for a while. No. Scratch that. Not exactly lame: redundant is more accurate. Apparently there are approximately about 7 stories in the world and those same stories get passed around, commented on, posted, and linked-to by all the other me-too, HANL bloggers out there who, I've found, have very little to add to the stories. Just check out this infographic of an approximately 2 month period at the beginning of this year. More of the same. Much more of the same. Yawn.

Granted, my interests when it comes to blogs are relatively limited. I tend to pay attention to technology, gaming, ephemera, and politics. But I think what started to discourage me was scanning the RSS feeds of the blogs I read and noticing that they all posted the same thing on the same day with few deviations. What's the point? Kotaku posts a story. Joystiq picks it up and thanks Kotaku. Gizmodo runs with it, adding a bit more. I4U jumps on the bandwagon. Nothing against any of those sites (I like reading them still), but to me it's kind of depressing. Check out the coverage of the PSP Web Browsing Hack that appeared over the weekend: Gear Live, 14U, Joystiq, unmediated, Gizmodo, and even my beloved bOING bOING all basically covered the exact same thing. I'm sure that there are about a gazillion more, but I'm just a typical Web user and have a limited supply of mental bandwith and energy.

My experience with Cool Tool of the Day taught me one thing: most folks can only keep this up for so long. And considering that I kept it up for 5 years (with a bit of help occasionally), 364 days a year (I took Christmas off), I think I've got the perspective to say that. Blogout, blog burnout, is a reality and I predict that at some point in the next couple of years, the popular blogs will consolidate (such as what's going on with the Gawker Media empire), while literally countless others with nothing interesting to say will slowly trickle down to nothingness. It's gotta happen. People have lives. Right now, the blogosphere is like the trendy up-and-coming neighborhoods populated by DINKs (that's "Dual Income, No Kids" to you non-ad-types) willing to pay rediculous sums to live in rehabbed factory worker housing and brave the grime of the cities in order to live lifestyles of the hip and stylish. Eventually though, those DINKs loose their "NK" status, get sick of the grime and the grind of city life, realize that hipness and stylishness can only satisfy for so long, and look for something a little quieter, a little less hectic, and a little more boring.

I think that sounds a lot more cynical than it was meant to be: I know plenty of folks who have kids who are still pretty freakin' hip (eg. one and two ). But they're rare, much rarer than the numbers of hopeful bloggers out there who keep plugging away and doing what everyone else is doing. Eventually if you aren't doing what you love and what you just can't not do, you're gonna give it up when you have the chance.

That's why I have to say that I'm beginning to love sites like PSP Envy. It's just a guy writing about his PlayStation Portable and not trying to become the CNN of the technology gizmo world. Articles like this one where he talks about how his wife has set a limit of two new games he can choose when he goes to buy his PSP are far more interesting than the hundreds of thousands of "PSP is here!" droolinghype stories that accompanied the launch of the device (a very fine device, by the way...I got mine!). It's honest, heartfelt, irregularly-posted, and unique. It does have a point of view-- a perhaps unhealthy obsession about a hunk of black plastic-- but you're not going to find this guy's stuff posted anywhere else. And when you read it you get the impression that he never checks his stat counter, couldn't give a rat's ass if anyone reads his stuff, and is determined to just do what he's gonna do without worring about becoming The Next Big Thing. Amen. I admire that.

So yeah. I'm back. And ironically I'm doing this because I've stopped caring what anyone thinks. Or maybe I haven't. Maybe this is just another egotistical attempt at garnering interest. Maybe I'm just writing this to stave off death by manipulating bits in a way that they'll stay cached at The Wayback Machine for all eternity. Maybe I'm just fooling myself. I really don't care. I just want to keep in touch with my friends, maybe make some new ones, and, above all, remain true to what I'm into. Not too high a bar to pass over, huh?

7:25:45 AM