Navel-gazing

'Bloggers are navel-gazers, and they're about as interesting as friends who make you look at their scrap books. There's an overfascination here with self-expression, with opinion. This is opinion without expertise, without resources, without reporting' (Schachtman, 2002)

The question seems to be – Blogs: democratic or crappy? I say – why not both? One of the most important aspects of the web is that it is bidirectionally democratic. That is – anyone can create a website, certainly, but everyone else has the option to ignore that site. Maybe 90% of bloggers are navel-gazers posting self-indulgent boring drivel, but – who cares?

The blog as a phenomenon can’t be evaluated in the same terms that traditional media has been. Osder condemns bloggers on the grounds that they aren’t qualified to offer serious journalism or unparalleled expertise, but acknowledges neither the possibility those ends aren’t the goal of most bloggers nor that there might be an audience for more personal forms of expression. As John Dvorak points out, the most self-indulgent web form, the vanity page, seems to be dying (is probably dead by now) at least in part because there is no audience for these nearly content-free sites. Blogs have taken their place and found an audience.

Some blogs are boring scrapbooks. Don’t read them, unless you know the author or are a really hardcore voyeur. Some blogs offer uninformed opinion. Even the best informed opinions, though, are still opinions, and where there is no objective truth (as in those things where opinions are applicable) sometimes insights come from unlikely corners.

More than anything, Osder’s assertion displays an ignorance of the blogging phenomenon (or, given the year, perhaps just a lack of foresight). If blogs were as boring as friends’ scrapbooks, they would not have achieved the popularity they have today. Or maybe those scrapbooks aren’t as boring as Osder believes them to be. There is little room for the personal in today’s mass media, and even the one genre that comes close to showcasing the personal – reality TV – overshoots and winds up in the realm of the absurdly impersonal caricature. Blogs can fill this void, and provide some human essence in an increasingly impersonal world.

Maybe bloggers are navel-gazers, and maybe there is a fascination with self-expression and opinion. But if so, it looks like other people’s navels are interesting, and the fascination is not so disproportionate after all.