The State Of The Bunion

Come this March, I'll have officially been blogging for two years.

Man, how time flies. One thing I've noticed though (don't worry, I'll not get all mushy, sentimental and constipated yet) is that every couple months or so, as the face of the blogiverse (my own term, can't stand blogspherewossname) evolves two little issues will come out of the woodwork with the consistency and perseverance of those irritating little sores in your mouth you can't help but shove your tongue into.

You know what I'm talking about. The culprits are the infamous What Is A Real Blog? dilemma and the Newspapers Versus Blogs! conundrum. It's like clockwork, in a sense. Someone's going to get pissed at a recent (or maybe even ancient) article on any one of those subjects, write a nice long rant about it (which in turn will be responded to and commented by other bloggers, especially the newer ones) fume and steam for awhile before finally making their peace with their matter and carrying on pretty much as usual, writing the way they're most comfortable with.

Which is precisely the whole point to begin with.

Now I admit I was heads on in it at first as well. I fumed, I raved, I got upset. These days, I just don't bother, although it DOES somewhat remind me how no matter how things change they always stay the same. Someday in the future, when blogs have turned into yet another historical quirk of the early 21st century, some people in skin fitting spandex, mentaltyping on their porta-hovercycles are going to stop and think:

"So what constitutes a REAL metatranscriptojectomediapub?"

Uh huh. It's gonna be a looong ride for this species. In the meantime, if you're into the issue, check out Penny Arcade's response to a traditional syndicated columnist's attack on their business model (Link) and also this may be of extra interest: A list of companies that have fired staff members who blog (Link). If anyone wants me, I'll be signing up for the Bloggers' Legal Defense Union.

Blog safe, kids!