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    Just blog off!

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    AA09-Apr-May-2005-rant2There is an old saying that puts a twist on an even older saying: Everyone has a novel in them… and for the vast majority, that’s where it should stay.

    Yesterday, I saw a toddler in a T-Shirt that had, “CENTRE OF THE UNIVERSE” stamped across his little chest. Quite true, I’m sure, for the little tyke, and an endless source of amusement for the many adults who preside over his vortex.

    There’s something of this mentality in Blogging. A puerile self-importance that smacks of desperation. Of course, the child in the T-shirt is a satirical prop, but how many bloggers can claim to demonstrate such laconic wit?

    What a wonderful thing the internet is. You can find accurate street directions to a hot new restaurant. Obtain up-to-the-second currency exchange rates. Even buy a Maserati from the comfort of your living room. But all of this is only possible after bobbing and weaving through a scrum of cyber loons screaming, “Over here. Listen to me. LISTEN TO ME!!!”

    Your average blogger is like that person everyone knows who simply has to get their mug in every photo for fear they will be forgotten.

    A good online search engine distils the results of a search into something that is of value to the searcher. So here’s the question: Why go to a random site to read a random opinion from a random and largely anonymous person? There is so much wonderful writing on the web. And — hype aside — precious little of it is being done by bloggers.

    You don’t have to know a genuinely famous person to understand the corrupting influence of celebrity. It happens everywhere, all the time. Someone takes the giddying step up from anonymity to basic obscurity and everyone around them cringes as the peacock fans its tail.

    In the privacy of their bedrooms, most bloggers at least flirt with the idea that thousands, maybe millions of people are reading their dark political screeds, or a list of their top 1000 sporting heroes, or meditative diary entries about their cat, ‘Herbert’. I’m sure they’d rather not hear that the only people reading them are other bloggers looking to change the world with little more than an ADSL connection, two sturdy index fingers and plenty of spare time.

    If politics attracts people who like the sound of their own voice, Blogging is a magnet for people who like the way their voice sounds in other people’s heads.

    But, of course, the internet is the ultimate embodiment of modern freedom — the individual’s right to free speech and the right for the rest of us to change channel.

    David Healy is a Melbourne-based writer.

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