I get this question all the time. Ok, so you think PrematureArticulations is a bit overblown and you’re looking at the first couple posts on this blog and wondering if I’m obsessed with Ryan Adams. Well, yes, as a matter of fact I am; but this doesn’t change the fact that I am (unfortunately) somewhat serious.
Here’s the rub for all you real bloggers out there. Please don’t read this blog if you don’t enjoy PA. If I blog it’s mostly because I am weak. It’s because I can’t discipline myself to journal, and because I’m not able to write actual essays in my spare time. Most importantly, I feel like I can blog because I read blogs and see that I can’t do much worse than pretty much anyone else out there. I’m not usually irreverent, and I don’t usually respect people who pride themselves in their ability to be irreverent. I guess I am beginning to fit right into this medium, because I really have begun to pride myself on my stubborn mockery of the blog-tards of the blog-o-sphere.
So, in accordance with tradition, my first blog is about blogging. Most blogs are half thoughts half written by people people shouldn’t care about. You probably shouldn’t care about me either, and you should care far more about Truth than my opinion. You see when it comes down to it, I think maybe people should blog. People should blog the way that people should myspace – in the responsible way that .1% of the population does. In meantime – I have half ideas and I might be able to half write them.
As much as I might try, I don’t think I am in that .1%. I know that the existence of PA has offended some very serious bloggers with a very serious blog. I confess the fact makes me grin, but I have no problem admitting that they are doing a far greater job at blogging than I ever will. I don’t mind it, the way I don’t mind admitting my mother-in-law can annihilate me in table tennis.
Blogging is not the salvation of the West. It does not free us from the corrupted tyranny of mass media. It is a footnote to the communication revolution that is the internet, and not revolution itself. Institutional media is in all its corruption is still better than the blog-o-sphere. The “organic” response of the “journalism of all bloggers” is a poor shadow the of “priesthood of all believers”; and falls prey to the same problems inherent in the Protestant reformation. If every blogger had the skill and insight of professional journalist (and some of them do), even then they would still lack the time and resources to produce consistently good material.
What you have with the blog-o-sphere is a medium rich in self-indulgence and false opinion. But now I find myself joining the cacophony of confused thought, for I am my culture’s child: self-centered, proud, and opinionated. Even then though I’m not sure I would have given myself over to the dark side except for the presence of good fruit. That’s right, the blog-o-sphere can’t be all bad – it gave us Snakes on a Plane for heaven’s sake, and anything that can do that has to have some chalk full of awesomely goodness.
And about that I am serious.
Magnolia Mountain 