MadMup.com

Quoted here (in bold) with his permission. He didn’t give me permission to bold them, but I wanted to distinguish his list from my comments on his list.

10. I’m not sure I’m ready for something that seems so high-maintenance.

A person writing a blog to attract a large audience does, in fact, need to keep up with it. Daily posts are almost a requirement. In the fast-moving world of the Intarweb, people don’t like to check a page once a day (or many times a day) and not see any change. The larger the audience, the more important it is to update frequently. And if you’ve set a certain expectation that you’ll pdate at a certain time every day, keep that appointment!

9. BLOGs make me feel like I’m at a party where the only person I know is the host and I am vying for his attention with thousands of other attendees.

Thousands? Ha. I wish. About half of the people that visit here in a given day have gotten here from a search engine that spits my page back as a result to some really weird word combination. Since I’ve talked about so many strange topics, search engines spit me back a lot.

8. I would not comfortable even admitting some of the things that everyone blogging seems so compelled to discuss openly.

Not everyone who blogs is so personal. In fact, I tend to not be personal here, for a variety of reasons. Different people have blogs for different reasons, and one of my reasons is to entertain. I occasionally delve into personal stuff, but I leave the more for LJers.

7. I feel inferior because my thoughts throughout the day are rarely clever enough to entertain the people who would happen across them on the web.

If you knew Dave like I knew Dave, this would strike you as hogwash. A common problem is remembering the cleverness long enough to get it into some sort of print.

6. I feel inferior because when my thoughts are that clever, I rarely take the time to write them down.

Laziness, too, is a common problem.

5. I feel frustrated because when my thoughts are that clever and I do take the time to write them down, I can’t stop tinkering with them get that “perfect version”. (Guess how many revisions this list went through! In years to come bootleg versions of the lost copies will most certainly be in circulation—the most sought after draft will be the one in which reason #9 contained an alternate spelling of “vying”.)

I’ve got ideas flying around in my head that have been there literally for years that I haven’t put on paper for this exact reason. I can’t get them just right, and I don’t want to give them short shrift. Oddly enough, one of the ideas is a sitcom pilot that Dave and I have discussed on and off for a couple of years.

4. The word “BLOG” sounds like a scary monster in an old movie.

Agreed.

3. Every time I read a BLOG, I get the creepy feeling that any connection I might feel with the writer is nothing more than the chance result of my happening across a web page meant for others, but not really me, and is therefore not “real”.

This speaks to the fear that we can’t really know a person or have any sort of relationship with them in an online-only fashion. I’ve talked before about some of the friends I’ve made online, so I won’t rehash that. It seems to be true, though, that forming a “real” relationship requires more than just reading and commenting on a blog or in an online forum. Further contact and communication seem to be necessary. Email is a logical next step, followed by instant messaging , but then it tends to move towards “real world” means like phone calls and meet-ups. Just ask Mike and Meags. Who’s to say where they’ll end up? It’s likely they’ll get married, but even if they don’t, I am sure they would both tell you that they have had a “real” relationship up to this point. So, yeah, happening across a random blog won’t give you an instant connection with the author, but if it piques your interest, you might form deeper connections down the road. It all depends on what you want to put into it, I guess.

2. When the proprietor of that BLOG does not put his picture on the page, the feeling detailed above is compounded.

I’ve tried to combat that in recent days by including my current THorum webcam picture on my blog here. Granted, it won’t necessarily always be an actual picture of me, but it sometimes is, and it always gives a window of sorts on my current life or state of mind.

1. I am afraid that any connection I might feel with the writer may be more real than “connections” I have with people see on a somewhat regular and consider friends.

They say the key to any relationship is communicating. If you’re not communicating with the people you see regularly but you are getting frequent updates from a blog you read, it’s possible you could feel more connected to the blog author than someone you see every day. If you like the connection, follow up on it, I say. You never know where it could lead.

Now, if any of you need to buy a snake, Dave should have more available in the next year. He just sold the last of his last litter, so you’re out of luck for a bit, but his snakes really are quite beautiful, so it might be worth your wait.