December 10, 2004
To “Blog” or Not To
To “Blog” or Not To “Blog”—That’s an Uninteresting Question
The past few days here at “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly” have been devoted to our overwrought discussion of the 2004 Weblog Awards. Careful readers of our humble “weblog” will note that we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” didn’t even get a nomination for “Best Use of the Word ‘Feculent,’” or “Most Inapt Reference to Animal Husbandry.” And frankly, dear reader, we thought we had a lock on the latter category.Keen readers of our daily musings will also note that we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” have momentarily dispensed with our quotidian animadversions on all and sundry, and wasted our time caterwauling like a bunch of pathetic pre-teens. Where, our manifold readers may be asking themselves, are the yuks at the expense of Stanley Fish and other tenured radicals? Where are the barbs directed at Al Sharpton? Where are all the caustic excoriations of Bob Herbert? Where have all the flowers gone (long time passing)?
Good questions, dear reader; good questions indeed. In fact, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” are sick and tired of our vapid Internet navel-gazing.
And this brings us to another topic. It seems to us as if the 2004 Weblog Awards have inspired a ridiculous amount of e-malaise on the part of “webloggers” everywhere. Erstwhile talented “webloggers,” due to the introduction of the “weblog” awards, have been nattering on about some sort of existential crisis they are enduring.
Now that my “website” has or has not been nominated for such awards, say manifold “webloggers,” I simply can’t go on. I’ve lost that e-loving feeling. “Weblogging” just doesn’t have the beauty, the purity with which I used to associate it.
To which we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” respond: Get over yourself, Sartre. You are an indigent hack who wastes endless hours penning posts that will be read by three people and a mule. And two of the people will have stumbled upon your “website” by mistake, whilst hunting for Internet pornography.
So let’s not pretend that your foray into unpaid pseudo-journalism has lost its magic just because your “website” has suddenly attracted four people and two mules.
Allow us, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” to offer a word or two of advice, which you can even cut out and carry along with you in your wallet: Write a “weblog” if you want to; if not, don’t. We have the sneaking suspicion that Western culture will survive, whether or not the auteur responsible for “congenital-warts.blogspot.com” keeps pumping out illiterate piffle.
We, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” realize that, without us, the Internet, like Gloria Gaynor, will survive.
