Better than you?

In the time that I've been blogging, I’ve noticed that, like every other geekly pursuit (and yes it is a geekly pursuit no matter how you try and dress it up) lines have been drawn in the digital sand as to what constitutes good blogs.

Simple fact #1: Not everyone enjoys what I write about or how I do it. Doesn't hurt my feelings. I've been a real writer for sometime now and the first lesson you learn is that no matter how good you think your stuff is, someone out there is going to think an autistic kid with a pack of crayons could have done better.

So, I think it would only be fair to talk about those blogs that just escape me. The blogs that I read and say "you gotta be kidding me." Keep in mind I'm not so pretentious as to think that they're style is the wrong way, just that I feel like making fun of someone this morning and they drew the short straw. These people are funny in how serious they take blogging

I call these jaspers "I really want to work for Newsweek" bloggers, and I blame them on Wolf Blitzer. For the past few years, the mainstream media has been giving a ridiculous amount of attention to the these people, and that attention only serves as validation to the these kids. The wannabe Newsweek writers seem to have come under the assumption that they're real reporters, or worse, columnists. Writing about you particular political viewpoints is one thing, but actually believing that you are Spider Jerusalem is just delusional. What's worse about these kids is that they think that their particular style of blogging is the only relevant and meaningful way to blog. They criticize others whose blogs they find to be too much like "diaries," as if ranting about state politics is any different.

Not every person who writes about politics falls under this category though. Just the ones who honestly believe that they are on par with Maureen Dowd, Cal Thomas, and hundred other blowhards. Commenting on politics is fun for the whole family and I enjoy a good political rant. But the ones that think that their readership numbers in the millions are just annoying. While there are exceptions (there always are) most political bloggers are just like the rest of us: The only people reading what they have to say are their friends and the occasional troll that stumbles across their work.

These are an arrogant bunch not because of the content of their blogs, but because of how they look down their noses at people who use FREE blogs to write about the goings on in their lives or whatever bloggers decide to use the FREE blogs to write about.

Of course there are subsets of folks like this. There's the "I wanna be a columnist for Sports Illustrated," the "I think I'm Peter Travers" and the "Can I be the next Pat Robertson" folks.

I like my blogs to be like my friends: Unique with an independent voice. If someone wants to write about their new job, that's fine. If all they want to do is make inside jokes to their friends, great. I don't have to read it, but there is something fun about getting to peak into a total strangers life and what they're doing day to day.

But pretentious bullshit? That I can do without.