As Woody Allen said, the heart wants what it wants. So, why are you here?

blog-a-palooza

I'm mildly disappointed to discover I did not invent this word, even though its about as sad an example of internet nonsense as could possibly exist.

I'm more disappointed that "Choose Your Own Blogventure" was already taken as well. Though, honestly, if there's a phrase out there that hasn't had "blog" dropped into at some point, I haven't heard it. If someone remotely famous said it, someone has reworked it in order to spout their deepest, most brilliant feelings about the deep, soul-searching life of being an ad rep for Milwaukee's third-largest local bank. It's numbing. As FDR once said, the only thing we have to fear are blogs themselves.

Speaking of which, pundits often comment on how "the number of blogs to humans is approaching 1-to-1." This is always followed by "the Apocalypse is near." (side note: Ablogalypse?) This is idiotic reporting and means almost nothing. Their methods of counting are so suspect that it's remarkable no one calls them on this.

For example, I write and maintain this blog. So that's my one contribution to this statistic right? Wrong. Since editing the templates on these blogs can be tricky, I also have a blog that I started at the same time that I use to test out any HTML changes I make. There was also a brief period I was trying to separate out my music and movie reviews into separate blogs, and both of those blogs are still alive. So that's four blogs on Blogger right now, just for me. And I'm not the only one with this system.

For a while, I was copying these posts over and reposting them on Xanga. No longer, yet my Xanga account still exists, even though essentially no one uses that website anymore. I have forty or fifty friends with long-unused accounts left on Xanga's derelict servers. How many Wordpress users have unused Blogger accounts, or vice versa? How many keep switching back and forth?

Plus I have a MySpace account, which has a "notes" function, and a lot of people or bands use this as their blogging space, so that counts as a blog as well. I also have a Facebook, which automatically imports my notes from Blogger. But even if it didn't, it still has that "notes" function. So that one counts as well.

I'm up to seven blogs without breaking a sweat, and I've still got half a dozen different websites I use that have blog functions as part of what they do, and so can be counted as "blogs" by any media member who want to make their story sound more impressive.

Speaking of "making a story sound more impressive," I would really like it if newscasters stopped saying things like "...with some polls having him as far as twelve points down" or "...with some polls having him as close as only four points behind" when covering an election. That's bad reporting and everyone know it. If there are 12 polls in the field, and the four most reliable have him between 7 and 9 points down, then use those numbers. Or, even if you want to use all polls, even the one done by the Omaha Herald, then please - please - use mean or the median number. If the polls have a candidate down by 4, 6, 6, 7, 7, 7, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10, and 12 points down, the important numbers in that sequence are not the 4 and the 12. Stop relying on the outliers. I'm sick of bad polling being the most newsworthy piece of information to news directors.

Labels: blog-a-palooza, blogventure

posted by Ben Wyman @ 6:45 PM