desktop publishing made publishing more accessible to your average person. internet publishing has made publishing accessible to everyone -- and this includes people who have absolutely no idea, not one idea, not one thought-out opinion, not one anecdote or story, actually worth sharing.
the internet allows for near-instantaneous transfer of information. in fact, the internet is so good at transferring information, it can even transfer lots and lots of non-information right to your pc. that's right. you can now enjoy hours of surfing and downloading millions of bytes of non-ideas, non-opinions, non-thoughts, non-anecdotes, non-experiences, and non-stories.
the most damning testimony of this sad state of online publishing is the thousands of web journals and weblogs that have popped up everywhere. for every entry that contains an iota of wit, wisdom, or humor, say, amounting to about 1 kilobyte of data, there are at least 9 kilobytes of useless and meaningless words and graphics that go with it -- meaning that 90% of any blog could simply evaporate and the world would not be worse for it, or perhaps more accurately, 90% of bloggers could stop blogging and the world would not be worse for it.
the trick to weblogging (or blogging), you see, is to make the world (and your hypothetical friends) think that you're actually doing something with your life even though you're not. in other words, you make an entire entry about your thoughts and actions for the day, even though you haven't had a single coherent thought or a single complete action. what you do is write entries like this:
"[insert date here] [insert what a 3 or 4 kilobyte image here] i didn't get much done today. there were a few things on my mind but i can't seem to concentrate. maybe tomorrow. i'll update the links to the goth poems soon."
and of course, we have to devote precious bandwidth to the current mood: "[insert another image here] nonchalant"
and you do it again the next day:
"a lot of stuff seems to happening without me. oh well. shrug. eh. i don't care. grrrr. current mood: distant"
and the next:
"nothing important happened. maybe i got a lot of my mind, but none of it is really worth mentioning. oh well. current mood: apathetic. :( will fix my chibi gallery soon. ^_^"
and of course, each entry must have its own creative title. gems of wisdom and creativity include: "nothing much," "hmmm," "sigh," and the ever-expressive "eh."
why bother? there are several automated programs and generators available online that can generate random paragraphs more interesting than the usual blog mindlessness. in fact, the bloggers should begin using them. we might actually get better blogs, and the bloggers, having spent so little time creating a content-free blog entry using such a program, now has more time to do nothing in particular.
oh well. shrug.
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