Well, we’ve hit the 30 million mark. It happened earlier this month: more than 30 million blogs are online, according to the medium’s watchdog, Technorati.
What can I say about blogging that hasn’t been said already? For that matter, what can I say quickly to keep you, the reader, from clicking away from this page, since you’re probably tired of hearing the word “blog”?
How about this: Despite all the hoopla, over half of Americans aren’t sure what a blog is. That’s a good indication that most Americans aren’t bothering to eat from any of the 30 million plates.
And how about this: despite the blog cheerleaders who point out that blogs helped bring down Dan Rather and other phonies, less than .001 percent of blogs exercise any clout. The millions of blogs are scattering readership in a million directions, with the result that virtually none of the blogs exert much influence.
The average blog also does not make much money. The vast majority of blogs receives no advertising revenue, at best earning a handful of gift certificates with the online Amazon bookstore (bloggers earn approximately 5% if a reader clicks into Amazon from the blog site and makes a purchase while there). A few also receive PayPal donations from grateful readers. For highly successful blogs (say, those receiving more than 5,000 visitors a day), the ad revenue is less than $10,000 a year.
You would think that the lack of revenue and readership would be discouraging.
And apparently it is. The blogosphere’s cheerleaders tout the existence of 30 million blogs, but you don’t often hear that fewer than 10% of blogs add fresh content at least once a week.
The blogosphere is also littered with corpses. Approximately half of all new blogs are defunct three months after their inaugural post, according to Technorati.
So that raises an interesting question: What do all those bloggers hope to accomplish? Why are they writing?
It’s a fair question. It’s one that I, a blogger, ask myself all the time.
I don’t have an answer, but I occasionally like to recall a passage from The Philokalia by the Eastern Orthodox holy man, Gregory of Sinai: “According to Maximus the Great, there are three different purposes for which gifted men write without fault or constraint: the first, as memoranda for themselves; the second, for the benefit of others; the third, for obedience.”
Much blogging seems to be private memoranda. Indeed, in the early years, those types of blogs prevailed. Blogs were often nothing more than a teenager’s online diary. Today, a few blogs are nothing more than a writer’s private journal entries. Thing is, something can’t be deemed “private” if it is posted in a position to be read by millions of others. Consequently, I doubt any bloggers can claim protection under Maximus’s first purpose.
A few bloggers write out of obedience. You can find blogs by contemplatives that are either approved or encouraged by a religious order’s superiors. A few lay bloggers might claim that they write out of obedience to a higher authority (the Bible, the Magisterium, whatever), but that’s stretching the meaning of obedience.
I suppose many bloggers would claim that they’re writing for the benefit of others, and many are. Many bloggers shed light on moral, religious, political, philosophical, psychological, economic, or sociological issues that potentially make readers better in some way. I see edifying content on blogs all the time. I also see entertaining content all the time, and if you’re entertained, that’s a benefit.
But for the most part, I suspect bloggers fail all three of St. Maximus’s list of acceptable purposes for writing. It’s not unusual, though. I suspect most non-blog writers similarly fail.
Thing is, in past years, not that many people wrote. Millions of people dreamed of writing, but the lack of publishing outlets kept those dreams on the family room sofa. With the advent of free web space and free blogging software, millions can now write and publish.
And that raises a crucial question. If these millions of people are writing without edifying purpose, are these millions of people jeopardizing their souls? Have free blog space and software created a widespread spiritual hazard?
I can’t judge whether a particular blogger is blogging for the wrong reasons. I have enough trouble judging my own soul in this regard. But I think it’s worth recalling the rest of Gregory of Sinai’s passage above: “But he who writes to please men, for fame or for display, loses his reward and will receive no profit from this either here or in the life to come; more, he will be condemned as a sycophant and a wicked poacher of the Word of God.”
It’s enough to give this blogger pause.
© Copyright 2006 Catholic Exchange
Eric Scheske is an attorney, the Editor of The Daily Eudemon, a Contributing Editor of Godspy, and the former editor of Gilbert Magazine.
