I give up.

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There are simply too many blogs, and even too many types of blogs, out there, for me to even honestly attempt to examine the phenomenon in general. I'll criticize the writing, and more than a handful of blogs with excellent writing come to mind, many of which seem to have been meticulously editied. I'll write that blogs are little more than lists of links, and a slew of well-argued reviews on a wide range of topics jump up from the web. I'll suggest that blogs are little more than shopping lists, and I'll suddenly find myself faced with honest and touching personal journals.

But of course the opposite is also the case. I become convinced that blogging brings out the best in writing, in making well-thought out recommendations, in personal reflection, and suddenly I encounter a barrage of mediocrity (and often worse) that boggles the imagination. I suppose that my only consolation is that anybody reading this knows that from the start I had close to no chance of getting beyond gross generalizations.

Though of course that doesn't keep me from trying. It seems to me fair to say that even though some bloggers comment, while others simply catalogue, even those who comment seem to maintain a certain distance from the subjects they discuss, a certain detachment that seems to say look at me, rather than look at this.

And as though to confuse matters even a little bit more, some people seem to adapt well both to the medium of blogging as well as that of more traditional writing.

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Go to: And not really that different, or
Go to: Not for me, it isn't, or
Go to: The ethos of blog.