Eight States in Eight Days
Aug. 11th, 2005 12:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jsnlvA certain individual occasionally posts on a certain web forum; let's call this individual Ragdots. (This is a pointless exercise, but it amuses me enough that I can't stop now.) Every once in a while, Ragdots watches a movie or plays a game or has an experience so moving that he must write about it, enthusiastically and at great length; to be fair, he writes with intelligence, perspective, and a fair amount of humility. So why are these tiny dissertations so boring?
For that matter, why is so much of the writing on the Internet so boring? Look at weblogs. Look at personal pages. Look at the average humor site. You'd think that, with so much more writing being produced because of the ease of self-publishing, there'd be a lot more interesting and entertaining writing, right?
Well, no, not really. Take this sentence, for example: I know that, however satisfied or dissatisfied with this sentence I am (currently: somewhat dissatisfied), when I finally hit that "Update Journal" button at the bottom of my screen, this sentence will be out there for anybody to read. Because it's so easy to blog, I never have to worry about satisfying some minimum requirement for entertainment, humor, or even point. I can just blather on, aimlessly, and the text winds up on the website regardless. Internet writing is boring because it's easy to make.
Let's say that one more time, a little bit bigger:
It's that fear of being boring that keeps me up at night, that keeps me from writing as much as I feel I should. It's that same fear that's stopping me from assaulting you now with an accurate-down-to-the-minute, blow-by-blow account of the vacation I just got back from. It's for your benefit that I now provide the ultra-condensened form:
On our vacation, we visited eight states in the American Midwest in eight days, and it was a lot of fun. The end.
For that matter, why is so much of the writing on the Internet so boring? Look at weblogs. Look at personal pages. Look at the average humor site. You'd think that, with so much more writing being produced because of the ease of self-publishing, there'd be a lot more interesting and entertaining writing, right?
Well, no, not really. Take this sentence, for example: I know that, however satisfied or dissatisfied with this sentence I am (currently: somewhat dissatisfied), when I finally hit that "Update Journal" button at the bottom of my screen, this sentence will be out there for anybody to read. Because it's so easy to blog, I never have to worry about satisfying some minimum requirement for entertainment, humor, or even point. I can just blather on, aimlessly, and the text winds up on the website regardless. Internet writing is boring because it's easy to make.
Let's say that one more time, a little bit bigger:
Internet writing is boring because it's easy to make.
It's that fear of being boring that keeps me up at night, that keeps me from writing as much as I feel I should. It's that same fear that's stopping me from assaulting you now with an accurate-down-to-the-minute, blow-by-blow account of the vacation I just got back from. It's for your benefit that I now provide the ultra-condensened form:
On our vacation, we visited eight states in the American Midwest in eight days, and it was a lot of fun. The end.
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no subject
Date: 2005-08-11 06:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-11 04:14 pm (UTC)Shatner: No, but you never talk about yourself.
Takei: Maybe if you showed a little interest.
And no, I don't really have a point here.
no subject
Date: 2005-08-11 06:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-11 07:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-11 07:51 pm (UTC)