48 lines
3.8 KiB
Plaintext
48 lines
3.8 KiB
Plaintext
Who’s a warblogger? Blogotypology considered
|
|
<p>My good buddy Doc Searls <a href="http://doc.weblogs.com/2002/06/05#wereAllBlogmongers"> says I’m<br />
|
|
a warblogger, not a techblogger</a>. Truth is I’ve never thought of<br />
|
|
myself either way. I had only the vaguest notion what a `warblogger’<br />
|
|
is until I followed his links to the definitional discussion. I write<br />
|
|
stuff related to 9/11 because it’s one of the definining events of our<br />
|
|
day, but I didn’t start blogging particularly because I wanted to<br />
|
|
comment on the war. Y’all may have noticed that I write about sex and<br />
|
|
guns a lot. Nothing about witchcraft yet, but give it time… :-)
|
|
</p>
|
|
<p>The blogotypological distinction that makes the most<br />
|
|
sense to me is “thinker” vs. “linker”. I know which of those<br />
|
|
camps I’m in. I’m a thinker, an essayist. I’d rather write about<br />
|
|
my original thinking than reflect or index other peoples’ 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’d actually say there’s a<br />
|
|
third setting on this switch; “diarist”, someone who blogs<br />
|
|
essentially as a public journal. Like Den Beste, I’m not a diarist; you wouldn’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’s the<br />
|
|
frame in which my ideas happen. I can imagine writing personal journalism, but it’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’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’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’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’s another<br />
|
|
distinction we need; `problogger’ (someone like Jonah Goldberg<br />
|
|
whose blogging is a seamless extension of his day job) versus `playblogger’ (someone who blogs to let off steam that their day-job channels don’t have a good vent for).</p>
|
|
<p>While the best I can say about the term `warblogger’ is that<br />
|
|
it’s not completely useless, `techblogger’ seems to me to be a<br />
|
|
category that’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’ll end with the obligatory abjurgation not to take any such<br />
|
|
terminology too seriously. We’re all writers, a prickly bunch,<br />
|
|
and we’re all to some degree category-busters by nature or<br />
|
|
we wouldn’t be here in the infancy of a new medium at all. Still…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>
|