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Do We Blog For Fame?

Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 1:14 pm Posted in Blogs I Read, Life, Media

http://www.bloggingtricks.com/uploaded_images/iStock_000001627298Small-737898.jpgDo people blog less to share and sharpen thought and more for the purpose of self-aggrandizement?

We are a culture that is addicted to fame and Reality TV is part of that.  It is a world where “anyone” can become a “star” even in their on locale. I am beginning to think that blogging is part of this phenomenon. The purposes of blogging I have seen are to create a socio-cultural bond with others outside of geographical limitations, drawing attention to issues that many would not see through traditional media sources, and to be sure that are other purposes that try to foster a genuine connection with others and with other ideas.

Why do I do it?  I started this blog last March just as a place to record ideas that I had posted in the Atheism v. Christian Google group.  When that activity waned out of boredom, I changed this blog name and began posting here more and intentionally seeking out others sometime in September of 2007.  I am doing this because in the past I would not journal anything that I thought of. As soon as I would have a “good idea” that seemed interesting to me, life would intervene and eliminate that idea from memory. Sometimes it would an idea to pursue for publication or research. Other times it would be an idea that would become important for dissertation work. Still at other points it is one of those passing thoughts that seems profound enough to hold you in place for a second before it lets you go (I often get these as I drive down the beautiful mountains of PA on the way home each day).

This project is what I call a “plausibility test ground” where I can launch off incomplete and in-progress ideas before I come to a place where I want to tie loose ends and make an academic contribution if it seems worth doing so or if I have time for it. It helps me to try different ways to communicate and also offers a place to test audience response where I can hopefully get feedback. And sometimes it is for a good laugh or two to share with those I have met in the course of communicating and writing via this particular medium.  It is also a place to be a little more self-revelatory than I have been in other contexts in my life.  a way to share how my sense of self has been and is being shaped by the things that I consume such as music and books.

This does not mean that when I get feedback that I will not defend my thought carefully and sometimes with a pit-bullish mentality. I have been told that I can be dismissive, harsh, somewhat mean-spirited, etc. in how I defend a conviction around an idea. I try never to direct these comments at the speaker, but at the comments on the page.  It’s the only way to sharpen thought and why in academia we do blind reviews of our research.

It does not mean that I do not still reserve the right to admit that I might be wrong. It just means that I expect people to work hard to convince me of something that is contrary to a conviction I espouse and communicate here. This is not a place for me to “be right” and have others agree with me like a bunch of panting omega dogs. I am not in it for “fans”.  It is like the testing grounds at Quantico where bombs used to be dropped and guns tested on a regular basis. I fire shots and like to see where they are most effectively deployed. Not that I want my ideas to destroy anything. However, any good idea will re-shape a given structure of thought and no structure of thought is impermeable or immutable. To assert otherwise is the bane of fundamentalism.  I would hope that this would be a medium for a mutual re-shaping of thought for both the writer and the reader.  My goal is a pedagogical activity and something I associate with one of my primary vocations in life. I am always going to teach and I am always going to find ways to be taught.  This is one of those ways as it were.

However, is this true for everyone?  Are the intentions of others likewise? Or am I unwittingly participating in the reinforcement of our culture’s addiction to tabloids, gossip, Reality TV, and YouTube where a great deal of us have access to the world to say, “I am right, I am great, and everyone else must therefore be less attractive, less talented, and wrong”? Diogenes Allen defines fame as, “Filling other’s minds with yourself”. It is the opposite of anything remotely Christian where one ought to be bound to one’s neighbor in an act of obligation, not self-aggrandizement. Fame put this way is a subtle but powerful form of idolatry. Is that really why so many people blog and freak out at their Technorati ranking, their Google analytics, Feedburner subscriptions, positions on the blogrolls of others, etc.? Is it nothing more than a popularity contest masking itself beneath the veil of intellectual optimism and freedom?  How many of us are tacitly doing this in order to be noticed for the sake of being noticed and to get a fan base in the process?

So why do you do it? Or, why do you not do it?

(Go to Targuman, Jim West, and Higgaion [BTW Prof. Heard, you had me at "I agree with Jim" :-)] for another recent discussion on blogging. Those comments focus mainly on the structure of blogging in terms of the ways people write and for whom.)

Viewing 14 Comments

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    That's a good idea Ed! IT is the same kind of thing that I do with courses I teach. Start a conversation via blogs at least a couple of days before class. It allows me to see what people are thinking, what did not make sense, and confirms that people actually read (which is not something you can assume at all). Then I can actually adjust things in the course session because I will be able to get at specific assumptions and misunderstandings people had before hand. Makes a really efficient use of time and actually ends up shortening class time.
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    • v
    I blog sporadically for several reasons. I started a blog a few years ago when I was working with people in the congregation I serve about my sermons. A few weeks before preaching, I'd post the scriptural focus and start a conversation on it - it was largely people from around here, but it also brought in people beyond the congregation as well. I should start doing that again.

    I have started up once again after a long hiatus because its a way I can communicate in a more personal way both with people who keep up with me on facebook and also people (again) in the congregation I serve. I may not use it just for sermons, but for bringing up other ideas in an "unofficial" manner.
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    Nick, I know. And I am guilty as charged there. I think I have 175 in the feed reader - of course some only post something every blue moon. But still - it amounts to like 75 that are active. What gluttons we are!
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    Drew,

    I think that if people only kept tabs on 1 or 2 blogs then long posts wouldn't be so much of a problem, but as it stands, most folks have somewhere between 30-100 blogs in their feed readers. Those long posts have to be exceptionally captivating in order to keep someone's attention while they still have another couple of dozen blogs to skim through.
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    Ha! You can do whatever you want Jim. Keep that in the hopper for next April 1.

    Anyways dullness is a subjective trait. The posts on the Immanent Frame are long, but read more like scholarly pieces as it is. That keeps my attention. But even there I print it out and read it that way.
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    Heaven forfend, Drew- you're never dull!!!!!
    ;-)

    I very much like the Talmudic analogy. Yes- I like that a lot. It fits with my own procedure, as you know. I might even change the name of the blog to 'A Zwinglian Talmud'. What do ya think?
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    Jim: "The blog is a genre of its own." I wonder what the characteristics of this genre are. In other words, if you were to do a narrative exegesis in which you were to argue that this was written in the form of a blog, what would that look like? It seems like a brief commentary on stuff that's already out there with a few other original thoughts spliced in between. Like a Talmudic kind of writing in a way. And I understand the length thing too. I exhibit the same behavior. And I would guess by your "bluntness" that many of my posts would fall under the rubric of long and dull? ;-)

    Bryan: "Really there is nothing that special about internet fame anyway." My question is if there are many out there who have the perception that it is. Delusion is reality for someone, just not those who think that person is delusional!

    Nick: "I value blogs for their succinctness." And this is clear from the way that feed aggregators work. Big ideas should be chunked a bit better for the casual scanner. Guess that would go for Nathan's comment as well.

    Although in general some ideas are harder to keep to a paragraph or two. But it does seem that a paragraph or two will get more interaction with a reader. I wonder if we all just have such short and diffuse attention spans and this medium is simply symbolic of that.
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    I blog so that people have a place to leave comments and help me out. It also has helped me to organize my thoughts and is a creative outlet of sorts. The whole statistics/popularity thing is fun, but certainly not goal-worthy. Also, I totally agree with Jim's comment. I hate reading long blog posts and would much rather read something short. There is something about page after page of text on the internet that makes me keep moving along.
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    I started out in AOL chat rooms debating various cult members about various doctrines, etc. That led me to forming a home page where I would write articles on various apologetic topics. But there was little interaction in that, and the chat room interaction was always the same thing with the same people, and truth be told, I was quite bored with it. So I started blogging to attract a different type of interaction. As time went on I expanded from apologetic topics to other stuff, and now, to be quite honest, I blog for the free books! ;)

    Oh, and I quite agree with the "infamous" Jim West above, if I'm in the mood to read something that's long, I'll pick up a book. I value blogs for their succinctness.
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    I'm sure some blog for fame, even if they are hesitant to admit it. As for myself I try not to. I try to remain somewhat anonymous. I don't have my last name nor lots of personal pictures (or even my city listed), nor do I allow search engines to go through my blog. I don't want a lot of people coming to my blog who will just comment and then never return or who wouldn' be accountable for their comments. That's not the kind of fame you want where you get a lot of negative or shallow traffic.

    Really there is nothing that special about internet fame anyway. It's completely transitory. You could have the greatest blog and 100,000 visitors a day, but the day you stop blogging for good you are just a memory. Nobody goes reading somebody's archives for fun or going remember the good ol' days when so and so blogged. What's in the past is in the past on blogs. Blogs are a what have you done for me lately type of medium and when you stop, people move on (I've noticed this a lot over the 3-4 years I've been reading and interacting on blogs).
    Of course it's nice to have an average and steady amount of readers and visitors that way you can interact with various people on topics that interest you, but to shoot for fame and numbers just seems pointless. I mean have you ever been on one of those highly read blogs where each posts gets like 300 comments and the blog owner doesn't even really respond and nobody is really talking to each other beyond insults? Those blogs seem like such lonely places to me, unlike the blog that might get 6 or 7 responses on a good post but there is quality interaction and accountability.

    I look at it like churches. Would I rather be part of one of those big mega-churches where no one knows each other or has any meaningful interaction or relationships, or would I rather be part of a smaller average size church where you're like a big family. Personally I would choose the latter not only in a church but in blogs too.

    Sorry I blabbed for so long.

    Bryan
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    I don't blog for fame since I'm already 'infamous'. ;-) I blog to exchange ideas and interact with others as well as share information.

    I don't think people come to blogs to read long, meticulous, scholarly dissertations. That's what books are for- and if I may be blunt- long posts are dull and I seldom make it to the end of them. I'm not reading blogs to replace books- and I don't think posts should be written as if they were intended for publication like a book. The blog is a genre of its own. When the lines are blurred, blogs become pointless and dull.
    • ^
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    Sadly, just as the weather turns foul we have 140 some HS juniors coming to campus for a "spring preview."
    • ^
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    "taking my advice on topics for posts"

    Ha! Maybe... But I have let this one roll around for a few weeks anyway. Your posts kind of brought it out.

    And this weekend you might have a chance! The weather is going to be horrible. Snowy weather just in time to kill all of the blossoms again. Nice.
    • ^
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    Drew, taking my advice on topics for posts? ;-) I will respond this weekend. A little introspection is always worth while.

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