July 27, 2004
Baby, You Can Drive My Blog
Posted by | 02:33 PM
Not to trash our own personal medium, but I think the big media news of this convention is that blogs are officially unhip.
If blogging were a car, it would be a Honda Element: it was fascinating at first, when there were only a few out there. Then suddenly they were everywhere, and even your great-aunt Beth (the "character" of the family) had one. What was once radical and "edgy" is now normal and mundane. So it with goes with all things hip. Still, the descent to mainstream-ness is always a little tragic to watch.
Credentialed bloggers now attend official blogger breakfasts. CNN is doing a blog "round up." You're reading a blog on NationalJournal.com. Need I say more?
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You know, I had a blog back when it was called having a Web site, and the style of blogging was originally referred to as E/N, or everything nothing.
I've been doing the same thing on the Internet since 1998, only I woke up one day a year or so ago and the silliest name of all, "blog", had been attached to it.
Although back then it was a sign that you had nothing better to do than write your opinions on the Internet using some sort of system you wasted time designing yourself, and was still tragically unhip.
Josh Berthume, damntheman.net
Posted by: Josh Berthume at July 27, 2004 04:06 PMAlas, I fear Powers is right. However, given the sudden legitimacy of certain bloggers, perhaps the "blogosphere" will divide into layers, one in which non-sponsored bloggers shunned by the machine will become what the underground press was in the '60s. That said, in the interest of preserving my own hipness, I suppose I should be grateful that the convention revoked the credentials they had originally offered me.
Posted by: Addie Stan at July 27, 2004 06:36 PMBlogs unhip, wonky, sure. But never to be sucked completely into corporate media, because no matter how many blogs get coopted they will keep making more.
Posted by: Ed Cone at July 28, 2004 02:17 PM
