!anaj ,em s'taht

Which kind of a blogger am I?

There seems to be a general consent that there are two kinds of bloggers, even if the lines and criteria of distinction are often dissimilar.

Greg Knauss, emulating Jason Kottke, thinks that the two kinds of bloggers are the referential and the experiential one:

The referential blogger uses the link as his fundamental unit of currency, building posts around ideas and experiences spawned elsewhere: Look at this. Referential bloggers are reporters, delivering pointers to and snippets of information, insight or entertainment happening out there, on the Intraweb. They can, and do, add their own information, insight and entertainment to the links they unearth — extrapolations, juxtapositions, even lengthy and personal anecdotes — but the outward direction of their focus remains their distinguishing feature.

The experiential blogger is inwardly directed, drawing entries from personal experience and opinion: How about this. They are storytellers (and/or bores), drawing whatever they have to offer from their own perspective. They can, and do, add links to supporting or explanatory information, even unique and undercited external sources. But their motivation, their impetus, comes from a desire to supply narrative, not reference it.

Aaron Brazell proposes that

There are two kinds of bloggers: those who blog for themselves, and those who write for others. The first kind of blogger writes as an outlet for themselves; the second type tries to meet the readers’ needs. The problem comes when the first type tries to be the second type and fails.

A chap who calls himself Sirbastian Manning takes a technological approach:

There are two types of bloggers.
1. People who use premade software. These guys usually have loads to write about.
2. People who make their own software to blog with. These guys usually have nothing to write about (some do though).
I fit into the last group of people but now I’m using wordpress so I should start writing more.
Maybe tomorrow.

And cartoonist Jeff Danziger knows the ultimate truth about the two types of bloggers🙂

So which kind of a blogger are you? Which kind of a blogger am I? For the time being, I would simply describe myself as a blogger who has at one point made a resolution to write on post per today. That’s a statistical approach, but the rest follows from this. A certain quantity counts. And at the moment, I am also a blogger who considers reconsidering this resolution, as I feel I don’t really have the time for it – neither for writing about the things that do REALLY matter to me,

(e.g. about the annoying campaign of a club called Familiennetzwerk, i.e. family network, who are rallying to spread the word that day care children are severly traumatized and that there is no other way to protect a child’s sanity than by mothers’ giving up their jobs; recently on a television program, one of their spokes persons claimed that every third child in Sweden – a country where day care centres are not considered prisons, but a place of early social integration – was neurotic, basing her ‘research’ on just one Swedish publication by a woman who could, upon request, not produce any evidence for her findings; but the Familiennetzwerk doesn’t care, everybody can sing in their choir, for as long as they sing their tune… *grrrrrrrrr*)

nor for reading all the blogs out there that interest me. And if you have got just 11 blogs on your daily reading list, like I do, and you have another, presumably ‘real’ life to tend to, the demands of both tend to collide.

I am also considering writing in German – when I started, writing in English also meant to not align myself geography, which also lead me to the misspelling of the name of the province I live in, i.e. Vorradelberg. And know that I know that I am going to move away (relatively) soon, I might want to. Align myself. Geographically and linguistically. But then Cabbage, Lallopallo, Whetted and Nova wouldn’t be able to ‘read me’. Hmm.