To Blog or Not To Blog ...

When Hamlet posed that one-million-(add your own currency) question, it's safe to say that blogging was the furthermost from his obviously turbulent mind .....

Anywayz, being too lazy to keep a current update of my own blogs, it seems only natural that a lazy git such as I would pilfer, plunder and pillage other people's blog content for ideas .... and Lo and Behold, haven't I just hit the mother lode? .....

Reading my friends' blogs, I just get pissed, yes, pissed by the fact (but not by them, mind you) that they are "taking it personal" by their own submission (yes, that's the word) with what they have written on their blogs .....

The conclusion is that they they may or may not decide not to write what they truly feel and/or think about ....
Okay, to me, this is what a blog, especially a personal blog such as this offered by my webhost, is basically is: A personal journal, set in a public domain

Simple enough working definition .... so what we mean by personal is, of course, personal .... The things that one writes about will definitely encompass the things that happen in one's lives, including the people that one encounters/deals with/has an argument with/have sex with/go shopping with/declares war with/co-authors a blog with .... The list goes on ....

So, the question is, how personal do you want it to be? ..... The term "personal" in fact becomes more hazy in definition when we take into account that a weblog such as this is hosted by a public domain ..... You write really personal things, and you realize, you are fully aware, that with a click of the mouse, some stranger can actually read what you have written ..... or are you? .... In my opinion, it is what one aims to accomplish within this very public sphere by posting obviously personal entries ..... Are you merely ranting, or do you intend to do it with malice? ....

Unfortunately, from the legal viewpoint, such argument is not grounded ... isn't it? I wouldn't know, being where I stand, 'coz I'm just a hapless blogger with all these bloggers' responsibilities issues thrown all around me that they basically just go over my head ..... I'm reading all the related articles as we speak, and boy, even I have been "unethical" on certain things, such as allowing anonymous comments, using a pseudonym myself, and God knows what else .....

Heck, I'm not a reporter, by my own admission, and I assert that my blog is my personal space ..... I understand that it is a moral obligation to apply the terms "transparency" and "accountability" to all our words and actions, but what if I just needed to rant about something or rather someone that's bugging the hell out of me, and doing it in my own hand-written journals isn't enough? I want to write about it so that some stranger would actually come across my blog and read it, not because I want them to come away thinking "Well, that is some nutter, and I pity the people she spit her venom on" but more of "Well, she shared her pain, let's just move on" ..... I understand that we need to draw a line somewhere, but my question is, who is doing the line-drawing? .... Definitely not the hapless bloggers .....

To my two friends, you do what you have to do, but I was hoping that all the sincerity and honesty with which you have written your entries could be maintained .... notwithstanding, you did write rather ugly stuff about certain people (and/or organizations?), in my opinion I do not think you wrote them with the intention to harm or throw malicious light on said parties .... It's okay to rant, don't you think? ....

References:

1) Rebecca Blood's article
2) Code of Blogging Ethics (C.O.B.E.)
3) Article on libel .... I put this in thinking maybe they should add "New/Alternative Media" as part of the ones already listed

P/S ..... Well, when I do visit other people's blogs/websites, it isn't so much what they've written there that annoys the hell out of me, is more of the fact that they have superior web designs and all these stupidly cool widgets .... I can't even put up a decent visitor's counter on my blog, for god's sake! All thanks to the fact that I don't know jack when it comes to Hell-To-Mark-Language .....