6 Words

I've been blogging on and off since 2004. Never committing to any one style, topic or schedule for more than a month has made it so my readership is effectively zero. As stated before this just doesn't bother me. I think that blogging is an important part of my (continuing) quarter-life crisis and will be an invaluable resource to look back upon once I become a more established writer and person. In general I use my blog as a jumping off point for other blogs.

As a semi-regular blogger I am also in the habit of reading other blogs in order to get inspiration and, more often, to see the daily lives of people living elsewhere in the world. I read a fair amount of blogs on a weekly basis, somewhere around 20-40. I've come to live vicariously through these bloggers of whom I am not acquainted. What is normal to these people is so very different from the life here in Maine that it becomes exciting just to hear their tales. I tend to frequent the writers that live in Asia. These often tend to be expats from the US, UK, Ireland or Australia who are in their mid-20s.

I have a few pet peeves about blogs and blogging in general. This brings me to the reason I decided to write this post, the overuse of words in the *ugh* "blogosphere". You can find these words in just about anybody's blog, from the longtime "pro-blogger" with 11,000 followers to the middle aged mom that posts five times and quits. They are the go-to words for the masses. The hipster words, the words that show you have a complete lack of heart for what you're doing. Double bad if they appear in the title of your blog. Believe me you know a few blogs with some of these words in the title. I'm guilty of using many of these words at times. That's mostly due to pushing myself to blog when there's nothing going on to write about, or laziness. Probably both. Here they are, my gentle brigands.

• Musings/muse - Attempting to fake an appearance of being a philosopher or deep thinker. Really masking a post about cats, knitting, or hand lotion.
• Random - My generations favorite word. Because you lack the vocabulary to properly describe your mood or draw a connection between all the crap you're thinking about this word gets dropped in. Combine this one with the first one and you have about 35% of the blog titles on the net.
• OMG/LOL/LMFAO/etc - (Not actually etc, that's legit). Writing like u r txtn is an atrocity! Unless that's your gimmick. If it's not your gimmick and you're too moronic to actually learn to type... I weep for you. Can you imagine turning a paper in using this language? I just shuddered because I know it must happen somewhere.
• Adventure - Okay, I'm partially guilty on this one. Don't use this for everything, even ironically. Unless your gimmick is, y'know, some sort of Indiana Jones thing.
  
• Ramblings - This is right there with musings. If your thoughts aren't going to be cohesive maybe... don't post them? Sit down and think about it for a while and put something together? Or use the words sparingly, because it really is a great word. You're butchering it you cruddy bloggers.
• Addict - If you aren't really addicted to something don't use this. It's not as cute as you think.
  

What is the solution for the appearance of these words in blogging? A thesaurus? Better education? Doubtful. They'll continue appearing for as long as we put our thoughts onto the web, which is certainly going to be a long time.

I was clearly very mean here, but I think if a person is going to blog on the internets than they should write to be interesting. These words and problems persist from blog to blog and indicate a trend in our ability as a culture to communicate effectively. Where is the root of the problem? Most likely it's people being flippant about their own education. Maybe it's just me being an old man, grammar nazi combo. I honestly don't know.