Skip to main content

Blogging and some thoughts


Blogging is just about twenty years old.  Though the word ‘blog’ was coined in 1997, there were just 23 blogs in 1999.  The figure leaped to 50 million by the middle of 2006.  That was a phenomenal growth, no doubt. The most popular ones among the early blogs dealt with politics.  Slowly every subject under the sun made its appearance in blogs.

I would become a Yogi Aditynath if I decide what bloggers should write about and what they should not.  I would be the last person to go around burning blogs or anything at all that does not suit my taste.  However, I would certainly expect at least one thing while visiting any blog: it should give me something, something worthwhile.

Once blogging became popular, just about anyone became a writer.  Even illustrious poets like Shelley could not find publishers initially. Shelley paid for the publication of his first book. Bernard Shaw who won the Nobel Prize for literature published many of his plays himself.  Many books which became best sellers eventually were initially rejected by publishers. 

Getting published was quite a tough job.  Blogging made it easy.  Too easy.  Hence everybody – well, almost – became a writer.  But writing is not everybody’s job.  A writer must give something to the reader to think about.  Writing is about ideas.  It’s not just putting words together.  The reader must gain something.  At least something to poke his imagination. 

A lot of blogs fail to do that.  But a lot more blogs do offer fantastic stuff.  Apart from writing, there are excellent photographs, paintings, informative pieces, and so on.  I love those blogs which make me think, which provoke me, which invigorate my imagination, which soothe my soul or at least tickle the funny bone. But, as I already said, I am no Yogi Adityanath.  I won’t ever decide what others should do with their blog.  If I don’t like a blog, I stop visiting it: that’s it.  I won’t go around shooting moral shit on others.

PS. Written for Indispire Edition 162: #SeriousBlogging




Comments

  1. Great and valuable information. Thank you.
    You are a highly talented blogger!
    Keep up the good work...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Your blogs are always forthright and that makes it worth reading

    ReplyDelete
  3. Nice informative article. Regarding yogi aditynath, in spite of his past rhetoric, consdering the state of the state, a bitter medicine in the form of yogi may be the need of the time.

    ReplyDelete
  4. nice, great and valuable opinion! sir thanks for that

    ReplyDelete
  5. I totally and unconditionally agree with all the 4 comments posted above.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Commercial RO System - Business and Industrial Aquarium RO System. Shop latest and best quality premier aquarium Commercial RO System on reasonable prices in California, US.

    Shop 1000 Gallons per day at 100 psi at lower psi lower production. i.e. 70 psi 700 GDP, 1st stage Sediment filter 2.5 x 20 inch, 2nd stage Carbon Block filter 2.5 x 20", 3rd Stage KDF85/GAC 2.5 x 20", UV protected Commercial RO System in California, US.

    For more info you can check it out here : http://premier-water-systems.myshopify.com/collections/business-industrial-healthcare-lab-life-science-lab-equipment-other-lab-equipment

    ReplyDelete
  7. Editor of one literary magazine expressed his frustration to me -- These days, anyone who can read and write and has a computer can become a writer!

    Just to add to your post, quality and authenticity of the content are most important. These days, while exploring any concept people first log on to the internet instead of visiting the nearest library/bookstore. So many times I have come across incorrect information presented on several blogs. It has to be, as there is no editor.

    Most of the blogs are there for time pass or an escape. The priority is on expanding the readership instead of improving the content and quality. It falls on the reader to choose what to read and what to let go.

    Good that someone raised this issue.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Quality and authenticity are at a premium. That's the problem with a lot of writing these days. There seems to be little thinking behind much of the writing. That's why I raised the issue. I'm glad you liked my raising it.

      Interestingly, a lot of bloggers went on to become authors too. Many of those books aren't much to talk about, unfortunately.

      Delete
  8. "If I don’t like a blog, I stop visiting it: that’s it." is the practical way to go about it for blogging has so many plusses.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Agree with you, your points are very much valid.
    But what Yogi Adityanath doing with this post,means perspective is good, synchronization is also good but still it can be expressed without taking his name....Just a thought.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Your view is most welcome, Jyotirmoy.

      I am of Bernard Shaw's view that writing must have certain purpose, clear practical purpose. Yogi Adityanath is part of mu purpose. We are living in a country in which we will have no escape from the Yogi and such people.

      In fact, my last few posts were about the yogi and the next one is going to be about Ayodhya. :)

      Delete
  10. Yes, the reader must gain something. Run-of-themill stuff is pretty common nowadays. Will try and write something about this, sort of a last minute exercise, because this remains close to my heart, on gaining something from blogging.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm glad my post moved you to write something on the topic.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

The Second Crucifixion

  ‘The Second Crucifixion’ is the title of the last chapter of Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins’s magnum opus Freedom at Midnight . The sub-heading is: ‘New Delhi, 30 January 1948’. Seventy-three years ago, on that day, a great soul was shot dead by a man who was driven by the darkness of hatred. Gandhi has just completed his usual prayer session. He had recited a prayer from the Gita:                         For certain is death for the born                         and certain is birth for the dead;                         Therefore over the inevitable                         Thou shalt not grieve . At that time Narayan Apte and Vishnu Karkare were moving to Retiring Room Number 6 at the Old Delhi railway station. They walked like thieves not wishing to be noticed by anyone. The early morning’s winter fog of Delhi gave them the required wrap. They found Nathuram Godse already awake in the retiring room. The three of them sat together and finalised the plot against Gand

Vultures and Religion

When vultures become extinct, why should a religion face a threat? “When the vultures died off, they stopped eating the bodies of Zoroastrians…” I was amused as I went on reading the book The Final Farewell by Minakshi Dewan. The book is about how the dead are dealt with by people of different religious persuasions. Dead people are quite useless, unless you love euphemism. Or, as they say, dead people tell no tales. In the end, we are all just stories made by people like the religious woman who wrote the epitaph for her atheist husband: “Here lies an atheist, all dressed up and no place to go.” Zoroastrianism is a religion which converts death into a sordid tale by throwing the corpses of its believers to vultures. Death makes one impure, according to that religion. Well, I always thought, and still do, that life makes one impure. I have the support of Lord Buddha on that. Life is dukkha , said the Enlightened. That is, suffering, dissatisfaction and unease. Death is liberation

The Final Farewell

Book Review “ Death ends life, not a relationship ,” as Mitch Albom put it. That is why, we have so many rituals associated with death. Minakshi Dewan’s book, The Final Farewell [HarperCollins, 2023], is a well-researched book about those rituals. The book starts with an elaborate description of the Sikh rituals associated with death and cremation, before moving on to Islam, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and finally Hinduism. After that, it’s all about the various traditions and related details of Hindu final rites. A few chapters are dedicated to the problems of widows in India, gender discrimination in the last rites, and the problem of unclaimed dead bodies. There is a chapter titled ‘Grieving Widows in Hindi Cinema’ too. Death and its rituals form an unusual theme for a book. Frankly, I don’t find the topic stimulating in any way. Obviously, I didn’t buy this book. It came to me as quite many other books do – for reasons of their own. I read the book finally, having shelv

Hate Politics

Illustration by Copilot Hatred is what dominates the social media in India. It has been going on for many years now. A lot of violence is perpetrated by the ruling party’s own men. One of the most recent instances of venom spewed out by none other than Mithun Chakraborty would shake any sensible person. But the right wing of India is celebrating it. Seventy-four-year-old Chakraborty threatened to chop the people of a particular minority community into pieces. The Home Minister Amit Shah was sitting on the stage with a smile when the threat was issued openly. A few days back, a video clip showing a right-winger denying food to a Muslim woman because she refused to chant ‘Jai Sri Ram’ dominated the social media. What kind of charity is it that is founded on hatred? If you go through the social media for a while, you will be astounded by the surfeit of hatred there. Why do a people who form the vast majority of a country hate a small minority so much? Hatred usually comes from some