Who&#8217;s a warblogger? Blogotypology considered
<p>My good buddy Doc Searls <a href="http://doc.weblogs.com/2002/06/05#wereAllBlogmongers"> says I&#8217;m<br />
a warblogger, not a techblogger</a>.  Truth is I&#8217;ve never thought of<br />
myself either way.  I had only the vaguest notion what a `warblogger&#8217;<br />
is until I followed his links to the definitional discussion.  I write<br />
stuff related to 9/11 because it&#8217;s one of the definining events of our<br />
day, but I didn&#8217;t start blogging particularly because I wanted to<br />
comment on the war.  Y&#8217;all may have noticed that I write about sex and<br />
guns a lot.  Nothing about witchcraft yet, but give it time&#8230; :-)
</p>
<p>The blogotypological distinction that makes the most<br />
sense to me is &#8220;thinker&#8221; vs. &#8220;linker&#8221;.  I know which of those<br />
camps I&#8217;m in. I&#8217;m a thinker, an essayist. I&#8217;d rather write about<br />
my original thinking than reflect or index other peoples&#8217; words.<br />
VodkaPundit was right on when he compared me to  Steve Den Beste over at  <a href="http://www.denbeste.nu/">U.S.S. Clueless</a>.  <a href="http://instapundit.com/">Glenn Reynolds</a> is, of course, the king of the linkers (though<br />
he goes into thinker mode off-blog).</p>
<p>I&#8217;d actually say there&#8217;s a<br />
third setting on this switch; &#8220;diarist&#8221;, someone who blogs<br />
essentially as a public journal. Like Den Beste, I&#8217;m not a diarist; you wouldn&#8217;t find ramblings about my beagle or my infant daughter here even if I had either.<br />
My personal life appears in this blog only insofar as it&#8217;s the<br />
frame in which my ideas happen. I can imagine writing personal journalism, but it&#8217;s not my default style.<br />
<a href="http://www.asparagirl.com/blog/">Asparagirl</a>, on<br />
the  other hand,  is a  good paradigmatic example of a diarist; her ideas are embedded in a narrative of her life.</p>
<p>Of course, people do mix modes.  <a href="http://www.lileks.com/bleats/">James Lileks</a> is<br />
a diarist/thinker, or thinker/diarist,  and<br />
<a href="http://andrewsullivan.com/">Andrew Sullivan</a><br />
oscillates among all three modes in a (dare I say it?)<br />
gaily promiscuous fashion. But most bloggers seem to<br />
have a base style that&#8217;s one of these three, from which they<br />
may make occasional excursions but to which they<br />
inevitably return.</p>
<p>As Doc points out, I&#8217;m not a techblogger either.  Technology<br />
evangelism is what <em>I</em> do off-blog; <em>Armed and<br />
Dangerous</em> is for the writing that doesn&#8217;t fit that box, just<br />
as a lot of other bloggers treat the medium as an outlet for<br />
whatever is not <em>their</em> day job.  Maybe that&#8217;s another<br />
distinction we need; `problogger&#8217; (someone like Jonah Goldberg<br />
whose blogging is a seamless extension of his day job) versus `playblogger&#8217; (someone who blogs to let off steam that their day-job channels don&#8217;t have a good vent for).</p>
<p>While the best I can say about the term `warblogger&#8217; is that<br />
it&#8217;s not completely useless, `techblogger&#8217; seems to me to be a<br />
category that&#8217;s likely to survive as the medium matures.  So<br />
does the thinker/linker/diarist distinction, and the playblogger/problogger flag bit.</p>
<p>I&#8217;ll end with the obligatory abjurgation not to take any such<br />
terminology too seriously.  We&#8217;re all writers, a prickly bunch,<br />
and we&#8217;re all to some degree category-busters by nature or<br />
we wouldn&#8217;t be here in the infancy of a new medium at all. Still&#8230;I suspect that more definite blogotypes will emerge as people explore the space of available styles and discover which ones<br />
are most effective at communication.</p>
