Blogger's Itch

Why do we Blog?

A question that propped up in my mind while reading an article in "The Hindu" about how HR people are increasingly looking up to Blogs to determine their prospective employee's character, personal views, likes, dislikes and what not.

People use Blogs differently. There are people who pour their hearts out into their blog, so much that if the Blog had a soul of its own, it would juxtapose with the writer's own soul. There are those for whom a Blog is a medium to be what they are not in their real life. The anonymity that they get propels some people into developing an Alter Ego residing in Cyberspace, one which can do as it pleases, something like "The Mask" was for Stanley Ipkiss.

Then there are those who have not lost the etymology of Blog as a corrupted portmanteau of WeB Log. These are the people who use blogs to note down things they wouldn't wanna forget. Or maybe use it as a Log of their activities, business and/or personal.

Web-Savvy Journalists use their Blogs to publish their articles, inviting comments from readers. The comment space is often a Warfield, with one set of people justifying the author's stance pitted against another set baying for his blood. The journalist himself makes an appearance, commenting on other's comments of their own comments. Like BITSian Chemical Engineer turned Film Writer Baradwaj Rangan (IMHO the best Film Critic ever to grace Chennai) who feels his blog (http://www.desipundit.com/baradwajrangan/) helps him to connect with his readers like no other medium can offer. He even goes to the extent of questioning the necessity of the passive and inert Print Medium in a time when Television and the Internet have made news "interactive" like never before.

Then there are the "Specialist Blogs" in which a like-minded bunch hang out to pursue their hobbies like Quizzing, Solving Crosswords and the like.

Where do I fit in?

Well, when I started this blog, it was more of an experiment with a medium which was being talked about for the first time. Since then it has matured, along with its author hopefully, to this piece which makes it a compendium of dozen entries.

For me, the blog offers an environment to vent my feelings. It allows me to satisfy one of the most basic needs of Mankind: The need to be heard. Well, I know this contradicts the fact that the 10-15 odd readers who chance through these pages wont count much in terms of being heard.So it must mean more than that. Maybe it's the other basic aspiration of Mankind, Owning Property, Wanting a place that one can call one's own. My blog is a place where I rule, very much like my home. It grants me an unbridled Freedom of Expression, that I can't get elsewhere but at home. My writings are sporadic bursts, about things that move me into writing. Most of the articles are reviews of Movies, as they are stuff I wanna analyze and write about.

The randomness of my Blog Update reflects the fact that I write only when I feel the urge to talk about something. I am not writing to meet deadlines, not writing to do justice to fat cheques or legions of readers. I don't know how much of myself I've poured into this blog. My guess is not too much, there should be a lot more to ME than that meets the eye with this blog. If at all it reveals something, it is the period when am jobless enough to pursue Blogging. Almost all my articles are written during Holidays, when I don't have other things to worry about. Each blog takes nearly a day's labour to complete starting from the itch to write and conceptualization of the matter, though the writing may take an hour or two at the max.Such a luxury of time can't be got at BITS. Well, I guess am prattling too much about myself. So let's stop at that.

This blog is something like an Ergodic Picture of my Mind at the time of writing, albeit an incomplete one.

The reason I am keying this down is as a prelude to another article about something that has been bothering me, and no marks for guessing that is about Blogs too.