It’s all Wesley Crusher’s fault
30 March, 2007 — WolfieYou remember Wesley Crusher, don’t you? He was the annoying geeky kid in Star Trek: TNG. The one that had been an annoying, geeky kid in Stand By Me. Wil Wheaton is his real name, but it’s still his fault.
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I’d never heard of blogging, or weblogs, or the blogosphere or whatever your chosen name is (spawn of Satan, pile of drivel, not worth the paper it’s not printed on) until one day surfing the ‘Net I came across a link that invited me to read Wil Wheaton’s blog. I knew the name, remembered the face from ST:TNG, etc, so thought I’d check it out. After all, I hadn’t seen anything Wil had done since the show had been cancelled years before.What I found when I got there was a series of articles about his life; what he’d done that day, the jobs he was auditioning for, what is was like being an adoptive father, basically all the minutae of a normal life (albeit one lived in LA, which is somewhat less than a normal place to live).
It should have been boring as hell. It should have been an irritating “look at me” shout from a has-been child actor. But it wasn’t. Instead, it was compelling and addictive. You started to care about the guy, you wanted to know what was up with his dog Ferris, you wanted to know how he was getting to know his wife’s kids. You laughed with him, cried with him, felt the pain of the rejections and the joys of the triumphs.
All for the annoying geeky kid from Star Trek.
Which is when I started to get hooked. I started with Wil, but I branched out and was looking for other blogs. Now, just a few short years later they’re everywhere. If you haven’t got a blog, you don’t exist. WordPress, who host The Howl, have nearly 820,000 - then there’s MySpace, Blogger and God knows how many more.
But as we’ve seen with TV, mass availability leads to a decline in quality. When you have three channels to fill and a budget of £200m, you can spend more on each programme than if you have 300 channels to fill - and still the £200m budget. Blogs suffer the same fate; everyone wants one so that they can have a part of the Net to call theirs and spout off on whatever subject they like. But quality suffers. In years gone by, if you wanted to get your written work published, you had to work and work and work and maybe you’d get the lucky break and a paper somewhere would print your words of wisdom. Now all you need to do is click a mouse button a few times and you’re away.
The Howl is a prime example. A few days ago - whilst reading the techy blog of a friend - it occurred to me that I should start to blog. “What the hell”, I thought “I enjoyed creative writing at school and I don’t get to do it too often these days, so why not”.
And there are millions more like me out there. But do any of us have anything worthwhile to say? Does the world need to know the ins and outs of our daily lives? Do others need to know if I’ve had a crap day at work or that I only got two numbers on the lottery?
In all probability, no! Years ago, they’d never have found out, either - all this stuff would have gone in a diary that no-one was ever allowed to read. But they’re not going to get a choice about it anymore though. Blogging is here to stay.
And it’s all Wesley Crusher’s fault.
