So loud is the hype surrounding what blogging can and cannot do (mostly, it cannot) that real life writers which experience and skill have begun to engage in a very cartesian form of self doubting and navel gazing. “Maybe there is something to this blogging thing. Am I missing the boat?”.

Whatever happened to the column? BBC journalists covering Euro 2008, for example, now have a blog.

Tune into your local or national TV news station. Go to the kitchen and grab your egg timer. Sit down, watch the station and start the egg timer. See how long it takes before someone mentions the word ‘blog’ as a news source. “Bloggers have had this to say about [the flooding in China]..” Do they bother to verify the identity and location of the blogger? Chances are, it’s an american teenager trying to cash in on the events overseas to make a quick dollar from advertising. Here’s a better idea: actually send a journalist to China to talk to Chinese people.

Take a moment to write to your favourite columnist and ask him, nay beg him, not to start a blog. If he or she already has one, then maybe it’s time to have a new favourite columnist.

This process of filling a blog with multiple posts all in one go to help it appear “established” is called “seeding”. Bloggers seed their new blogs with posts. This is a tree analogy. Ironic since most bloggers haven’t seen a tree that wasn’t in the “Lord of the Rings Extended double DVD set” for at least a decade.  They love to use these real-life and real-business terms to try to legitimise their entirely fabricated and shallow industry. It’s as if they hope that by adopting these semi-authentic terms like “Seed” that people will overlook the blatant lack of substance in what they spend their time doing and maybe give them the time of day. It apparantly works since even the BBC and other offline media loves to talk about blogs and blogging. This is, of course, only because those offlin media sources are so terrified that “this internet thing” might be a serious threat to their readership.

In case you haven’t noticed I try to write long paragraphs. This is to ensure no actual blogger will read this and get angry and then blog about me. They switch off if a paragraph has more than two sentences and isn’t stuffed with keywords. Heaven forbid I get reviewed or “linked” to. Please god no. The last thing I need is a bunch of angry “professionals” defending themselves and “trackbacking” and “pinging” me all times of the day and night. Blog-stalking, I’ve heard it called.