So I'm trying to think of something to write this time. You know, because that's what journalists do- unless they've landed a job in radio or TV. And even then they probably spend a lot of time Tweeting. It's how birds find a date. For journalists, how you interact.
A lot of blogs tend to deal with something serious, or intellectual. So just to be funny, this one's about blogging. You can tell I'm low on ideas. It's either that or describing how much I enjoyed reading Hyrule Historia, which makes me sound like a complete nerd and has no relevance to anyone really.
So, here goes. Blogging...it's pretty common now. At a time where social networking has become the average person's usual method of interaction with at least 80% of their "friends", blogging has become a sort of box from which people announce their views on the world. Even dogs do it now, apparently.
A blog can be on anything, by anyone, so long as it's bigger than an extended rant but short enough to fit onto one web-page. Usually they focus on one particular topic, too, such as travel or pictures of Nick Clegg looking sad.
Some of them are thought-provoking pieces of work, with a genuine message about contemporary society. These tend to feature heavily on sites such as The Guardian, often as much as actual news, and their writers can become minor celebrities in their own right. A recent trend on such websites is to feature weekly articles from celebrity bloggers, such as Charlie Brooker and David Mitchell, who can then use it as a platform to secure interest in their other independent work from a wider audience.
You also have blogs with no real purpose other than to make you stop, laugh, and then carry on with life; the online equivalent of cartoons in a newspaper. These occasionally become a business, as with LOLCats, which then promotes its website through merchandise and social networking. It's got to the point when you can even buy books on them.
Other blogs combine elements of the two listed above. Extra Punctuation, for example, is a blog about gaming by Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw. It specializes in ripping the heck out of the latest releases in the gaming industry, with no real basis other than the author's own extreme tastes and more bad language than the wall of a public toilet. It's funny, slightly mental, but has more content than, say, a photo-shopped kitten with the line "I can haz CheezBuRgrz" pasted along the bottom. The medium-rare of blogs, say.
This, by the way, is barely a glimpse into the multitude of blogs out there. As social identities are increasingly being constructed online, blogs are becoming more and more common as views are developed and expressed by the individual, another way of telling an interesting story or a good joke.
The box I mentioned before has become a stage, and it can be heard and/or seen by everyone. Thank-you for watching.