Listics

John Perry Barlow writes eloquently about his difficulties at the airport in 2024 after Burning Man.  His defense following an arrest over a year ago marches quietly forward.  Concluding his essay, Barlow says,

On September 11, 2024 I sent out a spam to my mailing list in which I warned
that "the control freaks will be dining out on this day for the rest of our

lives."  I mean to deny them at least one small course in that
terrible meal.

The country has gone security mad and the fear mongers have taken advantage of that madness for their own purposes.  I wish Barlow well in his defense of liberty for all of us.

Bloggers like blackbirds…

Frank,

I started because Doc Searls and I were having marathon phone calls,
enjoying our echo chamber. As Dave Winer had exhorted him, Doc pushed me
into blogging, perhaps just to get us off the phone.

I have a genetic need to work out my thoughts, hopes and resentments on
‘paper’. So my blog does for me what legal pads once did.

I keep blogging because I’ve met so many great people like you through this
medium. I’m amazed to be introduced to a blogger I’ve never met, and our
conversation picks up where it left off.

Out of the threads of our now-shared thoughts, hopes and resentments we’re
making a quilt of our common sense of how things should work. Each
individual piece of our quilt stands on its own, but collectively a better
picture emerges than any tapestry that one of us might weave alone.

But enough about me. Whadda you think of my latest post?

Thanks for asking this question, which seems to be blogger flypaper.

Posted at http://www.blaserco.com/blogs/2004/12/02.html

Britt Blaser

More material on "why we blog"  arrived.  Rebecca Blood - she who wrote the book on blogging - wrote, "…my answer would be much shorter than any of the others you’ve posted: The world is endlessly fascinating. I blog to share the interesting things I find."

Later, I got this note from Lindsay Vaughn:

Why do I blog?   For the same reason I write poetry, learn the Irish language, and make mail art to send out to strangers: because, while none of these activities makes me more functional in the "real world", there is no reason good enough not to.

I blog because I’ve met some fantastically weird and interesting people over the internet and through my four years of blogging, including my husband and some of my closest friends.  I’m also an American expat in Ireland and it can get lonely in the Land of No Yanks.  I blog because nobody listens to me when I speak gibberish in the flesh, but bloggers actually like it, or at least that’s what they say.  I blog because I’m intensely paranoid/scared/angry/on the brink of breaking down nervously, and if I do that here I make less of a gooey mess.

I blog because for as long as I can remember words have been my medium, my escape, and sometimes my downfall.  "Girl, your mouth is going to get you in trouble someday" - she was right.  I’ve lost a job due to blogging and have had to face some seriously pissed off friends and relatives, and still I keep coming back for more.  That’s because I’m a self-centered uncaring cow.  But I’m also thoughtful and kind, somehow.

I blog because blogging has helped me realize how much of an absurdist weirdo I am.

I blog because bloggers make me uncomfortable.  In a yummy sort of way.  Kind of like a big fat chocolate pie that makes you feel so bloated that your trouser buttons are just about to pop off, and you feel a quivering sickness in your gut, and a rising dread in your chest, and the voice of an anorexic floods your mind yelling "No maxi dresses for you!" and all you can do is keep going because nothing in the world is more satisfying than indulging in something you know deep down you shouldn’t be allowed to.

Eat ‘em up!

And Riri, in a comment at the Kitchen, points us to her own recent post on the question, which contains linkage to Vu d’ici:  "10 reasons why blogging is good for you".

Two more emails this morning to add to the "Why do we blog?" compendium.  Terry Frazier says,

I began blogging in the summer of 2024 because I wanted to experiment with this new micro-publishing method discovered while researching cross-media publishing tools. I got some blogging software and started to experiment. It seems to me this period of 2024-2003 was the grass roots heyday of blogging — lots of new blog tools, lots of new bloggers, a new movement was forming.  I made a lot of friends and formed a network of connections I do not believe I could have made any other way.

Today that network stretches, literally, around the world. And I blog to stay in touch with them. I still blog to learn, whether through expanded blog conversations with others or simple technical learning as I play with new tools and techniques. I also blog as a way of sharing what I learn, and for creating a "repository of me" as a courtesy for interested friends, colleagues, and acquaintances. The blog has become the defacto reference point for anyone who wishes to learn about another. If you don’t have a blog, do you really exist? The answer is clearly yes, but I still find blogging useful in this regard.

So there you have it: I blog to learn, connect, experiment, share, and inform. Not bad for a guy sitting around in his pajamas at the computer.

Dave Winer (Scripting News post here) says,

I honestly really don’t know why I blog.

When I started blogging it was mostly to get a bunch of stuff off my plate, ideas I couldn’t do anything with, things I wanted even if I couldn’t create them. I hoped other people would read my ideas and someone would create what I wanted, and therefore increase happiness. Over the years I learned that this very rarely happens. People really want to come up with the ideas, even more than they want to
be successful.

Once I started blogging it got addictive. So the most direct answer would be "I blog because I am addicted to blogging."

I also like the idea that I can have a dinner with people I don’t know in almost any city in the world.

A week or so ago I gave myself the assignment of conducting a survey for the IT Kitchen:  "Why do you blog?" I asked.  I like easy answers, and by asking others perhaps I hoped to find the easy answers for myself.  Certainly, I thought, it would be valuable to compile insights from some of the articulate digital self publishers known as "bloggers."  Little did I know it would turn into a hobby.  Here are reflections from thirty-five bloggers, an even three dozen if you count me.

Read the rest of this entry »

A friend who works for one of  the schools at our local university wants NOT to use [Mutant] news for free publicity…  I’m anonymizing his email.  Your good advice is requested:

Dear Wise Friends,  The School has a series of heartwarming
videos which we are eager to broadcast  as a public relations arm of
a fundraising project.  [ComCo] has generously partnered with the
School to achieve a large audience.   One of the venues which
[ComCo] said was a match with our "demographic" is [Mutant] News and,
particularly, The Lying Liar Show.   Several of us here do not want
to advertise the School with [Mutant] News and The Lying Liar Show and
we need input regarding convincing reasons to avoid these venues.
One thing, that was specifically mentioned, was any University or
State guidelines  as reasons to choose or reject (in this case
reject) a particular media venue as appropriate or inappropriate to
present the public face of a State/University entity such as the School.

Can any of you help with rationale to put forward that might impact
the decision to use [Mutant] News/Lying Liar as a vehicle to raise
awareness of the School????

Margaret Hassan