He Protests Too Much, Methinks

Travelling to work on the train each morning, to beat the congestion and to try to do my bit for the environment I regularly pick up a copy of a certain newspaper. The paper in question has recently been celebrating the blog with their “2007 Brit Blog Awards”. Sadly, it would seem that not everyone shares their enthusiasm as a recent letter to the paper will attest. The pertinent points from the letter, as I can’t find a link for it, were as follows:-

1. No one reads them.

2. Those that write them are “a crowd of geeks with no friends, pouring out stuff that illustrates exactly why they have no friends……sharing their lame observations with us all day”.

3. “It disproves Borel’s theory – an infinite amount of monkeys battering away at an infinite amount of typewriters won’t eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare.”

4. “It produces a lot of smug, self-satisfied dweebs endlessly filling cyberspace with their inane ramblings about Bush ‘n’ Blair and the war in Iraq.”

5. In a more enlightened age they’d be sitting alone in their damp bedsits scribbling away into a paper diary and no-one would ever have to read their nonsense.

6. Hopefully one day they’ll all discover Internet porn and find something more productive to do with their endless free time.

Is this criticism unwarranted and unfair? I would counter his argument with the following:-

1. A cursory glance through the internet would of course reveal that the meteoric rise in the number of blogs being created is mirrored by the huge growth in visitors to the sites, so in fact this would tend to indicate that many people do in fact read them.

2. Sadly my dictionary didn’t provide me with a definition of the word Geek, so, presumably in typically geekish manner, I took myself to Wikipedia where I discovered that The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the word geek as

a. A carnival performer often billed as a wild man whose act usually includes biting the head off a live chicken or snake.

Not really the sort of thing I’m into or would advocate – but you could call Ozzy Osborne.

b. A person often of an intellectual bent who is disliked.

I may not be universally liked (well at least by certain ex boyfriends anyway) but I’m not often terrifically intellectual .

c. An enthusiast or expert especially in a technological field or activity.

Enthusiastic / expert in a technological field? I still struggle with the basics of technology so enthusiastic expert would stretching things a bit. Amateur on a steep learning curve might be more appropriate.

Now – onto the friends bit.
I am lucky to have many friends who are quite happy to read my idle musings and know not to take them too seriously. Let’s be honest – are the observations which us bloggers share any worse than the ones which this person no doubt shares with his colleagues round the office water cooler? I think not. He does have the option not to read our observations while his colleagues do not, I would imagine, have quite the same luxury.

3. The age of the universe is dwarfed by the gulf of time it would take a monkey to type Hamlet, (or at least that's what it says on Wikipedia) so it is this and not the blogging phenomenon which in fact disproves the Infinite Monkey Theorem to which I would assume that he is referring.

4. I for one have never hit so much as a key on “Bush ‘n’ Blair and the war in Iraq”. I admit that I have, however, read blogs on the subject as, I feel, he must have too to be quite so specific with this comment.

5. I have a very nice warm and dry flat thank you very much with no damp problems and have never had the urge to scribble into a paper diary.

6. Does this person believe that Internet Porn is a productive use of time? If so, again, I would have to disagree most strongly.

Of course with this amount of vitriol boiling up inside of him the only real option for him is – and I’m sure that you are there already - to start his own blog.