My own problem with the blogosphere is not that it’s selling out to the mainstream, but that most of it is spectacularly boring. The dominant quality is tedium: writers without editors, fact-checkers or paying subscribers to keep them in check. As Butterworth succinctly puts it: “If the pornography of opinion doesn’t leave you longing for an eroticism of fact, the vast wasteland of verbiage produced by the relentless nature of blogging is the single greatest impediment to its seriousness as a medium.”
Given that I basically agree with that quotation (despite its horrendous, overly ripened condition) as recent discussions will confirm, I was saddened by the reference to David Eddie, author of the excellent Chump Change of about a decade ago:
But this doesn’t hold up in all cases. Take my friend and peer David Eddie. A Toronto-based novelist, journalist and screenwriter, Eddie maintains a blog at http://www.davideddie.com even though he invariably has several other professional writing projects on the go. When I ask him (slightly incredulously) why on Earth he would bother to write down his opinions for free, he shrugs. “It’s a good way to limber up. You get up in the morning, fire up a blog, write the thing in 15 minutes and then you know what’s on your mind. I think it was Nabokov who said, ‘How do I know what’s on my mind until I write it down?’ “
Unfortunately, the fact checkers failed this time to note that Mr. Eddie’s blog has been dead since Monday, October 17, 2005. What is the word for the status of one’s limber if not upped for four months?
Never mind. Soon it will be again as retro hip to say you blog as it is now to say they are worthless.