Bloggers and Blockheads

This post will most likely make me unpopular, assuming anyone reads my blog (and that is very open to question, as is the premise that I am popular and can therefore become unpopular), but one has to let off steam once in a while and this is one of those once-in-a-while times for me. So here goes...

It is only when you start blogging and see the variety of other blogs that are on offer that you realise how lucky you are to be coming across the authors of those blogs only virtually and not in real life. It seems that for every really interesting and worthwhile person out there there are a hundred self-important oddballs, dreary droning nerds, stuffy old farts, silly empty-headed teenagers and wearisome witless weirdos, all of whom think that they are sharing pearls of wisdom and nuggets of intuitive insight about the world we live in. And of course in 99% of cases they are not. You've heard it all before and a lot of it is simply about growing up and that's a phase we all go through, it's not only given to a select few. And it's probably all been said before, hundreds if not thouands of years ago!

The strange thing about all this is that a lot of these online oddities are probably normal humang beings in real life and you wouldn't guess what nonsense was going through their minds if they were not blogging. They look normal and act normal but when they are in blogging mode they turn into first-class loons or nutty nitwits determined to prove to the rest of us how precious they are by their words. It's a bit like car drivers. Most people who drive a car are perfectly normal decent and polite human beings, but put them behind the wheel and they turn into sadistic monsters raging against other motorists and uttering every kind of profanity known to man. As soon as they come out of their car, they are back to normality, Mr Hyde has changed back into Dr Jekyll and all is sweetness and light again. And so it is with many bloggers out there in the blogosphere.

There is every kind of blog you can imagine out there and there are peddlars for every imaginable idea and concept and for those you haven't even imagined yet. So much so that some blogs are so 'way out' that they are virtually unreadable and unintelligible and were you to be able to give advice to the author you might strongly recommend some psychotherapy as a matter of urgency. No wonder we have so many mentally sick people in society! Now, thanks to the Internet and sites like blogger this motley band of misfits (could I be one of them?!) are all able to parade their dark imaginings and twisted cravings online in an effort to win acolytes and pass on their lunacies to others.

I often trawl the blogosphere in search of choice blogs that truly inform and entertain and it has to be a labour of love on my part, since I have to sample scores and scores of blogs before stumbling on one that has something of substance to say and presents it in a tasteful and interesting context and with some thought for the reader. I am presuming here, of course, that the ultimate goal of any blogger worth his name is to get his blog read by others. This may possibly be a daring presumption on my part but I nevertheless believe it to be true for the most part, otherwise they could just as easily scribble their thoughts in an exercise book or notepad, as we used to do before the arrival of the Internet. It's a mammoth task to separate the wheat from the chaff, and boy is there a lot of chaff out there! Perhaps it's even in this very blog of mine, in which case you will probably not be reading this now. Tsssskkkk!

But, having said all that and having left a lot unsaid, it's all free speech, I suppose, and that must be a good thing. It probably allows a lot of oddballs and nutters out there to let off steam and get things out of their system which, had they not this very effective safety-valve to release their pent-up feelings, growing frustrations and delusions of greatness, they might get up to serious mischief in the real world and do a lot more harm. Or maybe not, maybe it's the other way round and after building up a good head of steam on here they go out and mug old ladies, smash phone booths, and slash car tyres! Personally, the worst I've ever done is to go into the local park and piss up the side of a tree. Now that's protest for you with a capital 'P'! Next time it's the duck pond!