December 2, 2004
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The Number One Word of the Year is “Blog”
According to Merriam-Webster Inc., the most looked-up word in the Internet this year is “Blog”. Thanks to people like us who have nothing better to do.
Merriam-Webster defines the word as “A Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments and often hyperlinks”. The lexicographers at Merriam-Webster did not think that pictures and even music can be included in a blog. Probably, they never experienced a Xanga blog where many budding bloggers try everything in their blog such as pictures, music, and hyperlinks but they do not try to “write” anything meaningful or otherwise interesting in their journal, paying attention to spelling, grammar, language, and traditional civility that one expects in a document meant for the public.
If the majority of the blogs published in Xanga are supposed to represent what a blog really is, then my definition of blog will be something like this:
“A blog is an online personal journal of an individual who, since he/she has nothing better to do, writes virtually about anything and everything but more often nothing, with or without making any sense, usually paying little or no attention to grammar, language, and spelling, generally using profanity and word abbreviations such as ‘ur’ for ‘your’ rather freely, and characteristically filling the journal with unnecessary pictures, music, and hyperlinks, causing a total wastage of his/her own and also the reader’s time and energy, as well as wastage of the cyberspace where better and more useful information/data could have been stored.” *
* Copyright © 2004 Shoban Sen. All Rights Reserved.
Comments (6)
Do you hate people?
i’m not offended at all by your interpretation of my online postings. however, i am certain that you have not read my other “blogs” that unequivocally fit the description of blogs as documentation of reflections, thoughtful pieces with attention to grammar, syntax, and semantics. (i find not having to use the “shift” key as one less obstacle against the time it takes to publish my ideas). hopefully, you are passionate enough about your own statements to conduct more research on the very works that you criticize. i welcome your opinion, because i am confident in my abilities. thanks for visiting.
see that’s what happens when i read something as i’m getting myself ready to go out. hehe…well, i’m sorry for the misinterpreation of your intentions. in fact, i feel very flattered by your comments, and i hope i haven’t turned you off to reading my posts. let’s have a new go around. =D
Dear Shoban Sen,
I kind of like the idea that the Xanga folks have made it fairly easy to “publish” a blog, with easy to follow tools, so that a meager blog can be up and running in minutes. My first “blog” (before they called it that, I called mine a “diary”) was began in 2000 on my ElectricPoetry website to update what I was adding to the site, mainly, so that readers could instantly join me in my “experience” online at the time. It is located “here”. The neatest thing about Xanga are the “comments” sections, which allow for “personal feedback” and “community building” amongst like minded people. I would say don’t visit the blogs where you feel nothing is being accomplished. There are many “choices” to borrow from your earlier post, when it comes to surfing the internet. I’ve always maintained what I feel to be a very interesting website at AllThingsMike, and the “blog” has always been, for me, mainly a place to “announce” what I’m doing on the site. Each ”entry” is like a “magazine article”, and you do that here on your blog. Remember, there are “journalists” and “normal folks” and “kids” and “grandmas” and all sorts of people “blogging”. The technology is “ancient” by online standards. I signed on to my first actual “blog program” on Blogger.com in 2002. I can still mention “my blog” to people and they don’t know what I mean, so as the form of communication gets more popular, people are bound to search for the term, to find out what it is. I have always maintained that personal website building helps to foster artistic intent and to build community. You are of course right that some people are not creative, and hence do not have creative blogs. One could surmise that there are people whose blogs contain material that they copy/pasted from other people’s blogs, and no original content at all. I try to maintain that my website and blogs at all times are presenting original material, my own poetry, photography, and musings. When I feature something from off my website universe, I credit the “author” just like in print.
Yours is the second blog entry I have read in a few days which has mentioed the word of the year being “blog”. To me this is “old news” even though I only signed up for Xanga this year. Blogging is replacing the “free website” hosts of five years ago. I can still remember the shock of the community on Homestead when the CEO of that company told us we would have to start paying for the service. A lot of really neat websites were totally obliterated overnight. Thanks to companies like Xanga, which offer free space for a blog (although not with image storage, you have to pay for that, and I do) the “common folk” can still have a “place” on the internet. More power to democratic blogging.
Sorry for the “rant”.
Michael F. Nyiri, poet, philosopher,fool
I guess online blogs are people’s escapes from having to do things right; for instance, instead of spelling right or taking the time to type certain words out, many just take the shortcut because they can. Everything else is just about expressing whatever that person wants. Personally, if I want to rant or complain without having to seek someone out, I’m going to do it freely on my Xanga with or without curse words as I please.
Dude I never knew you were a philatelist! That’s tight