There was a time when I kept clear of the kinds of meta-Jesus ruminations so popular at some big-time community blogs, thinking that running a weblog was quite enough self-indulgence, thanks. Of course, there was a time when I pointedly refused to use the word "blogosphere," vote in elections, or drink flavored coffee, and that all certainly went by the boards. So too has it been with thinking about blogging, and recent thoughts have coalesced about a question: What kind of blogger am I, anyway?
Most would recognize that there are indeed different kinds of blogs, though people seem to differ on the exact number and the distinctions between them. Some suggest there are only two kinds of blogs, while others go as high as ten. I'm drawn to the simplicity of an ontology that breaks all blogs everywhere in the world into four categories - political, gossip, mom and music - but suspect that we're somehow missing a category or two. Or twelve.
Even in the subset of political blogs, for example, you can find several forms or types, each reflecting the purposes of the writer. Even though purposes may blur together or overlap even within the bounds of a single politiblog, we generally can distinguish between reporters and advocates, generalists and specialists, analysts and philosophers and wonks. Horses for courses, as they say.
Anyway, I did ask this question of myself, and upon reflection the rather sobering but honest answer seems to be that I write a celebrity blog that is painfully short on actual celebrity.
Well, okay. It's a niche.
So what kind of blogger are you?
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