A web log, like a personal diary or journal, is a form of mental catharsis; a purging of emotions. Catharsis itself derives from the Greek Kathairein, which means to purge, especially the digestive system. People don’t typically regurgitate warm fuzzies. As the analogy drawn above would suggest, what people write on blogs is acrid, bitter, foul nastiness typed out as cleverly as possible and then spewed onto the world wide web. Another way of looking at it is that most of it is complete shit.
This blog is no exception and I’ve fiercely upheld the view that anonymity + audience = complete jerk. I’m sorry, but I’m not going to stop. That’s just the way things are. As with all other human endeavors, if you feel like being optimistic about it, then you obviously don’t know what’s going on.
Thursday, December 08, 2005
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2 comments:
That's not always the case. I mean, I can be a jerk a lot (drowning girls in fountains) but I also get the warm fuzzies (which has been evident lately). And it isn't the case with you, either. You've managed to avoid jerkdom.
It may seem I'm not a jerk because I only do injustice to dead authors and relatively obscure members of the scientific community. If I had real human interaction, I'm sure I'd blog about in the same critical way.
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