WRITING HUMOR

We Need To Rebrand The Blog

Blerg? Bob?

Photo by Birmingham Museums Trust on Unsplash

I hate the word “blog”. It sounds like some kind of disgusting food that only British people eat.

“Oy, I’m popping round the pub for a pint and a bit of blog. Care to join me?”

And then you sit down to a glass of some black, room-temperature liquid they call “beer” and a bowl of hot dog vomit.

Bloggers endure a lot of contempt.

“It’s not real writing.”

“It’s just a glorified journal entry.”

“But you don’t make any money so what’s the point?”

“Blogs are self-indulgent and embarrassing.”

“Oh, you blog.” [Spoken by my boss in a tone of withering contempt.]

Blogging was invented in 1836 when Sir Edwin Bloggington’s notes to his local butcher got out of hand.

See, isn’t that interesting? I can’t believe you’re going to make me look this up.

The word blog is actually a shortened form of its original name, “weblog.” These weblogs allowed early internet users to “log” the details of their day in diary-style entries.

So in other words, blogging is yet another hideously malformed monster child of the internet that should be kept in the cellar along with Twitter, Facebook, and every other social media platform.

I find it fascinating that the first uses of social media were to immortalize the mundane details of people’s lives. The minute Twitter was invented, everybody went full Samuel Pepys:

Pepys wrote consistently on subjects such as personal finances, the time he got up in the morning, the weather, and what he ate.

Pepys was a cat person, so I imagine him making cat videos in a powdered wig with one of his 17th-century cats, which is also wearing a wig.

The difference between a diary entry and blogging is that sometimes actual information is conveyed.

Blogging is no longer, “Dear Diary: Today I ate a grape.”