Thursday, March 02, 2006

The Dummy's Guide to the World of Blogs

Having made my entry into the bloggers world pretty late, I realized, to make it big here I needed to do lot of catch up and fast!
Off I went with my quest and here is what I discovered!
All those wannabe bloggies out there, you have got your hands on to a treasure trove of secrets! Don’t let this slip by... Read on... -;)

I started my journey with a deep dive into the history of blogs. And what I chanced up on were extremely stirring!

Blog on the Rocks!
Not surprisingly though, the most primitive form of blogging was started on Rocks. The bloggers used to hack their feelings on to the big sized stones found in vantage positions.
Though immensely popular, this style of blogging couldnt really thrive because it was not really user friendly.
With a Rock blog, it was impossible to do a preview before publishing it to the larger world outside.
Linking between blogs was equally difficult too. A typical Other Blogs I Read section used to read like this:
The white twisted Rock near Kalyani's house, The Red half broken Rock behind Kancho's tea shop... etc.

Then along came Wall Blogging where people could express their level insanity on the walls.
This kind of blogging led to the expressions like Writing’s on the wall, Rahul Dravid the wall etc...
But once the political parties started using walls for their election campaign, the genuine bloggers couldn’t find themselves any more walls and had to retreat.

There was a lull in the blogging community until the next big invention, the Diary!
Many a wall space denied blogging souls started venting their blogging anger in their diaries.
Most of these blogs would start with "dear diary..."
followed by a prolonged silence... deep thoughts... sighs... and end with the realization that those two words are really all they could scribble.

The birth of blogs as you and I see today:
The white collar jobs created an extreme band of, dont_know_why_am_doing_what_i_am_doing people.
To help their routine and mundane tasks little more engaging and interesting, man invented what is know today as, Personal Computer(PC).
These computers were so useful and powerful that, one could play Solitaire, Pinball and Minesweeper games at office.
As expected the white collars got hooked on to them. But as with anything, the initial excitement started to wane and playing Solitaire become as mundane as any other chore at the office.
That’s when Internet and WWW (World Wide Waiting) made its way promising networked Minesweeper and Solitaire games.
The prospect of playing Solitaire with someone at Bhikaji Cama Place in Delhi, while sitting in Anna Nagar office in Tamilnadu caught the imagination of millions of white collars.
Little did they know, back then, Internet was more than just Minesweeper and Solitaire networked.
It had all they have been aspiring to do in the office, but had to restrict mostly to the tea time and lunch breaks. Chat!
Chat and How!
The Muniappas and Munisamis started chatting by the name Greg and Sam! The lady, with a figure that would lend further credibility Darwin's
Theory of Evolution started feigning as the next miss universe in waiting and promptly had a ball chatting with Gregs and Sams!
It wasn’t long before Gregs and Sams realized if they could impress miss universe in waiting, why restrict themselves to her alone, after all WWW also meant World Wide Web.
Greg and Co. decided to cast their Web, World Wide!
Enter Electronic Blog! The place where Gregs, Sams and all the like minded legends found writing nirvana.

Now that you have a good understanding of the history part of blogs, time to know where it all standing now. The Present.

My research revealed there are primarily three categories of blog today, they are:

I'm back blog!
Surprisingly, the most number of blogs belongs to this category. These blogs invariably starts with "finally... i'm back after....", "I'm back...", "back here i'm...",
"i'm back only..." etc, invoking an instant "who cares!" reaction in the reader's mind. And if one could stand the ordeal of reading through them, more often than not, it
prompted them to leave a comment to the tunes of thanking heavens for keeping this blogger away for whatever little time.

Geeks blog!
Having figured out the real identity of Gregs and Sams, these so called Geeks, didn’t quite wanted to be identified with them. After all, unlike Muniappas and Munisamis, Geeks knew, the tray looking thing which one can keep popping in and out of the computer's CPU is not really a coffee cup holder, but a tray to insert a Compact Disk and DVD.
Reading a Geeks blog can be little more engaging than the I'm Back blogs. Then that’s only a sad reflection of how bad the I'm Back blogs are.

Thinking man's blog:
Well, after reading almost a million blogs, roughly the same number of vehicles found in a 100 meter stretch of Bangalore road, I'm yet to find blogs belonging to this category.
I was told though, they still exist. Please drop a comment if you happen to stumble up on one -;)

And of course, the pragmatist that I am, I was eager to find out, if there exist a flip side to blogs as well.
I wasnt to be disappointed.

The main criticism has been the amount of trash which is dished out in the name of blog is second only to Sunny Deol movies! (I strongly agree with the Sunny Deol part of it).

Another equally major concern was, Blog would reveal the real character and thinking patterns, or its abscence, of our generation to the future ones. This would, in effect deny us a chance to boast and engage in a "In our times..." conversation with the future generation,which our grand parents and parents used on us, with telling effect!
I think critics are not with out a point here too. I shudder the thought of not being able to boast to my grand children, "In our times... we used to... [bluf... bluff... and blufff] "

The next one may sound a little silly, but on the face of it, looks quite true too. That is, if you have a blogger identity which remotely resembles a lady's name, it tend to attract more readers, profile views and more comments. I was baffled to see all those nerds out there competing each other to praise those rotten rambles, just because the name of the blogger had a Susy in it -;)

Heck! Can't you, dear reader, feel the big... bad world of Blogs reeling under your feet now? Armed with all these earthshaking information you should be the next big thing in the blogging ambit. All The Very Best! Go ahead and get cracking now!
One request though, please don’t compete with Sunny Deol movies.

ps: I was told that there are few bloggers like sidin, india uncut who can claim to be in the Thinking Man's category. I just wonder though, isnt this variation
of blog, a cheating on the great vision of Gregs and Sams and everything they thought Electronic Blog should stand and used for?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Amazing flow of thoughts... really enjoyed reading this. Though initially i was little confused what the writting was all about -;)
keep going... will come back again for you new posts.
-Neen

Lalit Singh said...

Hilarious!!!
would be back for more

silverine said...

LOL good one :))

Kartik Kannan said...

Hi
This is Kartik Kannan from Sulekha.Welcome to Sulekha!
We have successfully imported your blog at Suleka but we need your email id to create your account.So please send me your email id as early as possible.Thanks for your interest in blogging at Sulekha.Hoping to see more of your posts on Sulekha

Kartik Kannan
Kartikk@sulekha.net
katchucrap.blogspot.com