Why do people blog? Why should (or should not) people blog?
I arrived at my own version of the answer a few months ago; I wanted to think more, crystallize my thoughts, and get feedback on them. The best way to achieve all three goals was to post my thoughts somewhere public. First, in order to maintain the momentum–in order to post regularly–I needed to set aside some time to think, and to write my thoughts down. Moreover, the fact that my thoughts are out there, for people to read, motivates me to make my arguments crisper and to expand on thoughts which are confusing (surprisingly, the posts don’t necessarily have to be read by anyone, that fact that they may suffices!). Finally, the most effective way to get feedback is to give everyone an opportunity to comment.
The experiment worked out for me–I’ve been posting very regularly (I even maintain a buffer of two or three posts just sitting there as I mull over the final details) and have caught myself having to think really hard about some things that I had initially deemed “obvious”.
I admit that this is probably not the most common reason people have blogs. A lot of them want to show that they are interesting; they want to be heard (so if nobody ever read the posts, they would see their effort as a failed one). This reason is tricky in that often it spectacularly fails to achieve the goal: the desire to be heard may cloud one’s judgment — instead of putting down your thoughts you end up succumbing to the masses (who, bored with the commonplace, demand extreme viewpoints, excessive colorization and emotionally charged statements). Just like television, blogging whose success is defined by its popularity almost always suffers from this problem.
A lot of people think of blogs as their diaries (except sometimes they forget that they aren’t locking their blogs in their drawers). They hope to some day come back and relive their life, or compare their state of mind and thought process to what it used to be. Recording your thoughts for posterity is a great idea, even if you don’t think so today. In thirty years or more your life philosophy will almost definitely be very different than it is now. It’s better to have an option of looking back (even if you don’t exercise it) than wanting to and not being able to.
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[...] A pending comment! How exciting–I love hearing what people have to say. It is, after all, one of the two reasons why I post. What is one of my dear readers going to say? Is he or she going to vehemently [...]
I like this post.
Feedback is one component, but it ties into the greater concept of entering into a bigger dialog (i.e. the world’s dialog). I think this is a little different than how you are presenting it, which is largely about what you are getting — and not what you are giving.
Connecting to people is another reason. If you present a system of thought, people begin to offer not just snippet evaluations but possibly a relationship. This would be the most exciting reason for me to blog.
Finally, you describe the idea of crystallizing your thoughts. I think it’s a little bit different than that. Yes, you are refining your idea. You are also learning how to present it; you are learning how to write. In some way that is a refinement of thought, but I think it’s largely an exercise in communication not conception.