BLAH BLAH BLOG

Published in DECCAN POST JULY 2008
Murphy’s 116th Law states that ‘Left to its own devices, anything can go wrong from bad to worse’. Blogs and bloggers were left to themselves – as platforms of creative writing for amateurish and enthusiastic writers in 1998. The same blogs (short for web logs or online journals) have now become an online menace - a dumpsite for personal raves, rants, news, views, juice, gossip, secrets, sexual fantasies, unholy thoughts and whatnots! Some blogs look for admiration, some affirmation, some for acknowledgement and some to just download their guilt. And why do people read blogs that don’t really concern them? To eavesdrop, to peek into other’s lives and feed the curious cat in them.

Googling the word blogging yields 77,000,000 results. Mind boggling? Considering nine blogs are created every minute and 2.3 content updates are posted every second (According to Wired magazine), blogging is the new online pastime. After aimless surfing, impersonal emailing, personal chatting and intimate webcamming, the new mania online is blogging. Blogs are the new I, Me, Myself avatars of online users. That blogging is free, easy-to-use (write and click upload) and fast and promises anonymity is certainly attracting even non-writers to post little big things of their everyday existence.

Blogging is the new tool through which actor Aamir Khan assures his fans that he is doing just fine after he injured his thigh at a Hyderabad shooting schedule. It is also the medium through which social activist Nandita Das fights her cause. It is where media professionals jam together to vent their ire out or bitch about bosses. Singletude is about advice to singles on how to get hitched and to be happy if there is no relationship on the cards. A Wired online research reveals that six out of ten blogs are malicious and gossipy. Is blogging therapeutic? Or is it just a vicarious pleasure to bitch about colleagues behind their backs?

Pyschiatrist Naveen Nekkanti, himself a relentless blogger, says blogging is the online confessional box. “In the church, only the Father listens to you. Online, the entire world is listening to you. Blogging should be used to expressing thoughts, writing creative pieces and discussing ideas. But to use it to debunk and backbite somebody on an everyday basis could be a sign of your own mental illness,” he says.
“A blog is like a personal CV. People google your name and want to know about you through your blog and once they realize both of you are on the same wavelength, they befriend you in real life,” says Dr Sneha Krishna, a doctor who does not blog but often meets people asking her why she doesn’t.

Blogs have become popular after employees have found that it is the best and safest place to discuss office politics. “Gossip has always been dangerous. But with the new blogging phenomena, it is also instantaneous. However, it is not very tough to guess the employees who put up blogs,” says Anjali Kola, a senior HR consultant.

Blog censorship is the new keyword online. Just as abusive posts and vulgar responses can be removed on websites, blogs may soon have a censorship body if the content gets exceedingly malicious or inappropriate. But that is still a long way. For now, the online world’s credo is I blog, therefore I am!