Is Blogging Bad for You?
When blogs first arrived on the internet scene a decade ago, they were places where quirky people went to obsess about inconsequential things. From shoes to Smurfs, it seemed as if every topic had an addicted chronicler who was not afraid to proclaim his existence from the basements of America. Who could have guessed that only a few short years later, ordinary citizens would embrace this format to express important political and social opinions! Today, these types of websites have become an essential component in the great debates of morality and justice in this country.
Yet there is something inherently inadequate about blogging. By definition, blogs are informal, stream of consciousness journals dedicated to single subjects. They are a virtual dream come true for a needy narcissist. They seem to say it’s okay to have phobias and passions, compulsions and illicit cravings. Hand this insecurity off to a person who may have little education and no credibility, and trouble follows. Most blogs are written by amateur thinkers with no journalistic experience. Serving up a foul stew of mishandled metaphors and run-on sentences, convoluted theses and inexcusable leaps of logic, they will label themselves as experts qualified to give vital life advice. Tragically, today’s young web surfers do not understand the difference between this sort of garbage and the work of a genuine news journalist.
The glitz and the glamour of the blogging lifestyle only makes this situation worse. It’s a feisty parade of hotlinks and party invitations, Google mentions and free promotional gifts. You get to work from home or from anywhere in the world at your own schedule– even if this means only two or three hours a week at 4am. Despite their grammar-challenged efforts, bloggers seem to exist on the cutting edge of the news cycle. They constantly scoop tv programs and newspapers, earning themselves fame and fortune in the process. As blogs grow, their audiences change as well. Once visited only by friends and random clickers, these sites have a nasty habit of devolving into cults of personality where every nuance, every changed header image, is discussed as if it’s a profound socioeconomic issue. Young people just starting out witness all this and imagine blogging as a real profession. From a distance, it looks like a respectable and even creative “career choice” and many imagine that it will be the envy of their peers.
What most do not realize is that prolonged exposure to blogging can lead to significant emotional problems. This is partly due to the fact that people lured into this lifestyle lack the psychological maturity needed to navigate the adult world (hence the reason they turned to the internet in the first place). The blog does nothing to push a young person towards confronting real world situations or finding a real job, rather it legitimates their own failings and provides unreliable financial cover as they sink deeper and deeper into codependency.
Ultimately, a blogger will develop a personal relationship with his or her blog not unlike a marriage. The blog takes on the role of the husband, providing the paycheck that keeps the roof over their heads. The blogger will become the dutiful wife, irrational and emotional in the face of the blog’s logical and authoritative technological underpinnings. She will fight with him, scream at him and he will brood in silence, manifesting his displeasure in moody outages and server problems. The two will grow intensely dependent on each other– he will not survive unless she feeds him (with new posts) and keeps their home environment clean from spam. She will fill up her days by pestering him constantly, clicking pages old and new alike to make sure he is still faithfully dedicated to their relationship and working properly.
Having an intense and extensive relationship with any inanimate object is never healthy, but for the blogger it can cross the line into the obscene. There is something about the marriage covenant played out in bits and bytes that moves from the irrational to the downright disgusting. As mentioned above, the blog often serves as a release for the pent-up psychological frustrations of its wife/writer. When these mental issues become sexual, as they often do, the blog page simulates the role of the physical partner these lonely people wished they had. Who other than a laptop would share a bed with a blogger anyway? Before long, the blogger will begin to fantasize all sorts of sexual images and metaphors in their daily exchanges.
In moments when they are “pounded” by traffic, the blogger will take it and take it both ways– “pounded” being a crude slang word for harsh intercourse and also meaning to receive a large number of web visitors. There is no doubt that it’s thrilling to be slapped awake one night by an unexplained surge, that suddenness and strength overwhelming as you seek to understand what’s happening and who’s doing it. The sensation of your site filling up is like that of blood engorging an organ or something forcing its way into a hole that you didn’t realize was so vast and empty in the first place– all those unappreciated old posts! And then the feedback starts like a sweat that breaks out all over your body at once, the perspiration leaking down your crevices, pooling up in places over some minor matter. Are you tempted to reach out a finger, post a reply there and whet your taste buds with the salty discharge of your commenters?
Hotlinks will be the next big thrill when the relationship with your own site grows too familiar. Yes, some anonymous blog from the skankiest alley of the internet might emerge to take its turn pounding you, spraying that gooey mess of new visitors across the face of your site as you pant and moan trying to keep up and maybe eventually you adapt to this new intensity, the elevated traffic numbers and endless emails, maybe you will accept this as your new life… But it will end as suddenly as it began. Those other blogs will sober up in the morning light and slip away guilty and silent. You will be left alone, mopping up the strange corners where clicks goobed up, wondering what magic combination of keywords and Facebook gossip caused all this in the first place, wondering if somehow you’ve been unfaithful to your own blog by letting these others dominate your attention. In time, you’ll grow desperate to feel that thrill again– how many days should you wait before hotlinking back to one of those blogs you encountered the other night? Will he even bother returning your call or were you just some random harlot he violated for fun and insults?
No, it will never feel like the first time ever again. You’ll chase that rush, but it will always be just beyond your reach. No amount of topical postings, liberally applied, will cure your ache. You’ve bitten into the forbidden fruit and now you’re destined to live out your life half-broke and glued to a potato chip-encrusted laptop, trolling the offbeat and pornographic corners of the internet like an aging party girl shopping for a skimpy black dress. No matter what you find, your tummy of desperation will still show. That’s the life of the full-fledged blogger and if you’ve come this far, that is what you’ve become.
- Sinful
- Suspicious
- Scared
- Sad
- Amused
- Laughing Out Loud
Author: Stephenson Billings
Stephenson Billings is an Investigative Journalist, Motivational Children's Party Entertainer and Antique Soda Bottle Collector all in one special, blessed package! Facebook me here or Fanmail me: StephensonBillings@yahoo.com !
2:48 pm
Finally. A topic where Billings can describe his own miserable life.
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2:49 pm
Buddy, you have hit the nail head yet once again with your investigative style. Bravo!
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3:17 pm
Weren’t you his research subject?
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3:12 pm
Hey look its my blog! http://kilzhoes.blogspot.com/
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3:28 pm
Thank you for proving my point.
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4:34 pm
How do report such content to be removed?
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8:48 pm
To the Internet Police.
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9:24 pm
Here, I think i found their website. they’re in charge of everything on the entire internet.
http://www.amishrakefight.org/gfy/
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4:38 pm
billings im sorry but i think you made a mistake.
you link to a”genuine news journalist” links to a blog.
everything you just described is there. what isn’t therehow ever is journalism and news.
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4:38 pm
“Most blogs are written by amateur thinkers with no journalistic experience.”
In other words: you.
“and the work of a genuine news journalist.”
Nice blog you’ve got there.
“The blog takes on the role of the husband, providing the paycheck that keeps the roof over their heads.”
Excuse me, but my mother AND my father provide the paychecks. Welcome to the 21st Century, dipshit.
“The blogger will become the dutiful wife, irrational and emotional in the face of the blog’s logical and authoritative technological underpinnings.”
Look, just because you’re a bitter old man who’s never managed to land a wife doesn’t mean you have to be a sexist asshole and claim that women are “irrational and emotional”.
“Having an intense and extensive relationship with any inanimate object is never healthy”
Then you might want to give that Fleshlight of yours a rest.
“The sensation of your site filling up is like that of blood engorging an organ or something forcing its way into a hole that you didn’t realize was so vast and empty in the first place– all those unappreciated old posts! And then the feedback starts like a sweat that breaks out all over your body at once, the perspiration leaking down your crevices, pooling up in places over some minor matter. Are you tempted to reach out a finger, post a reply there and whet your taste buds with the salty discharge of your commenters?”
You sound as though you have firsthand experience.
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7:37 pm
Ah, Claire the blogger is living off Mummy and Daddy! How nice for her! “Welcome to the 21st Century”, she says. Is that what is supposed to be normal nowadays? I think Claire has too much free time to sit around and criticize esteemed investigative reporters like Stephenson. Perhaps if she were supporting herself and being a productive member of society, she wouldn’t be such a perfect example of what this article describes…
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4:18 pm
First of all, I’m not a blogger. Second, I’m only 19 and in college. So shut up and make your boyfriend that creampie he wanted.
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5:47 pm
You post enough here to be considered a “blogger”. And your insults are pathetic. Don’t you get the point? You are ADDICTED to this site and are taking your anger out on anyone in sight. Your spite and vindictiveness betray you. I suggest a rehab for you; a Christian 12 Step program to break you free from your addiction to Christwire and substitute it with an addiction to Christ.
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9:22 pm
Hey Bob, your mother called. She said that your mental deficiency was caused by damage to your frontal lobe by a clothes-hanger while you were in the womb. She has my sincerest apologies…that her attempted abortion didn’t succeed.
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3:16 pm
Claire, if anything this article should make it incredibly clear to you that I am not a blogger. As I have stated many times, blogs are personal diaries or journals that have to do exclusively with the small obsession of an individual and their daily lives. Blogs are mostly focused around some hobby or whatnot. This article is a piece of journalism, a piece of investigative news reporting on the trends in society. And I do realize women also work for paychecks, but I am referring to a traditional analogy of men as the providers and women as the mothers, home caregivers. That’s what makes the most sense for the situation I’m describing.
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3:55 pm
actually no this is exactly what you explain as a blog. a personal openion on something you have somehow encountered in your daily life. just like every other blog post you have made. until you start useing actual facts it will be simple bloging.
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9:26 pm
“This article is a piece of journalism, a piece of investigative news reporting”
And where are your journalism credentials? Any real journalist would be more than happy to provide his or her credentials and wouldn’t keep refusing.
“And I do realize women also work for paychecks, but I am referring to a traditional analogy of men as the providers and women as the mothers, home caregivers”
Once again: welcome to the 21st Century.
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9:36 pm
Stevie, you’re a fucking blogger. You insult everyone, you demonize everything, and you throw the word ‘liberal’ around like it’s some kind of fucking insult. Exactly HOW many conservatives and republicans and Christians have come on to this site and said that you’re full of shit? Even your own damn community doesn’t want you around, you’ve been shunned into the same category as the Fred Phelps Fags, a bunch of outcasts and terrorists who thrive off of hatred like the fucking scum you all are. You wanna claim you’re an investigative journalist? Fine, then prove it. What’s that? You can’t/claim that it’s an invasion of your privacy? Well guess what, you’re committing fraud jack-ass. You’re nothing but a fraud, you’ve always been a fraud, and you bask in ignorance and claim to be a holy man.
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11:12 am
Why are you so afraid of a little common sense and traditional morality? My writing reflects the great spiritual and cultural debates of our times. You should sit down and listen for once, instead of running around the room screaming, like some 12 year old. You might just learn something here.
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12:05 pm
“You should sit down and listen for once, instead of running around the room screaming, like some 12 year old”
Screaming like a 12 year old? You mean like this?
“ALLS I WANT TO DO IS HELP YOU PEOLE AND YOU JUSTB SLANDER AND ATTACK ME CONSTANT AND WHY????? BECAUSE YOU”RE ALL INTO SEX AND DRUGS AND WHATNOT AND I STAND UP FOR A MORAL NATION OF THE RIGHTEOUS YOU WILL ALL BURN IN THE DEPTHS OF SATANS LAIR IF YOU DONT REPENT> I DONT WANT THAT TO HAPPEN BUT I AM TRYING TO HELP IF YOU DONT WANT TO LISTEN THEN DONT. NOW GO AWAY AWAY AWAY!”
“CLAIRE YOUR DUMB COMMENTS CANNOT INTIMIDATE ME AND I KNOW WHAT IM DOING SO STOP GETTING ME RILED UP SO YOU CAN GET PAGE HITS OR COMMENTS OR WHATEVER ITS LOOKING SO DEPSERTE YOU PART I CANY HARDLY TELL WHAT THE WORLD IS TO YOU FILKS NO PLEASE ANSWER ME THAT SO ENOUGH? I AM JUST TIRED AND SICK OF YOU ALL SHOWING NO LOVE, NO KINDNESS NO WISDOM.”
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12:06 pm
why are you so afraid of a logical aproch and everything new?
here’s the deal. unlike you when we encounter difreing openions we actually do listen to them. we try to understand you. we’ll even let you go about your life beliveing what you want to belive as long as it doesn’t have to effect us and you don’t lie.
you’re the one avoding every wellthought out argument ever put against you claiming it to be biased and therefor invalid or simply ignoreing it then going on to flame everyone who have less thought through argument.
why do you fear our sense of morality? and if you refuse to embrace what we belivewhy should we embrace what you belive?
P.S. your writeing refelcts your own personal openion nothing more.
you are making the common falacious argumentation of useing “we” where you should use “I”
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3:43 pm
//Why are you so afraid of a little common sense and traditional morality?//
I’m afraid of common sense? Aren’t you the one who screams complete and total nonsense every time you open up your pie-hole?
//My writing reflects the great spiritual and cultural debates of our times.//
No, it reflects that old people are out of touch with the world around them and how ‘everything was better back when the only people with rights or equality were white men of high power’.
//You should sit down and listen for once, instead of running around the room screaming, like some 12 year old. You might just learn something here.//
I’m the one trying to teach you a lesson, you just keep throwing spit-balls back in my face because you’re nothing but a brat. You can’t accept a different idea once you’ve been told otherwise, and if it sounds like a positive thing, then you instantly label it as evil and an abomination.
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5:01 pm
This is definitely comedy. This site is a clone of “The Onion”…only making fun of Christianity. I get it now. It is parody. I knew it had to be. I think the author is describing himself, in this article. He’s not joking, but he hopes we’ll all think it’s a joke! I see no reason for lonely, sexless people to waste time on blogs, especially, when there are so many interesting books & wonderful computer games, which work your mind. This author needs something to help his mind. He’s stale on material & fuels his comedy with details of his own miserable life, writing barely decent biographical parody articles for ChristWire.
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3:18 pm
Not very funny at all. We’ve heard the conspiracy theories thrown around enough. Why don’t you crawl back to your buddies at Daily Kos or wherever? We don’t need to read more of your nonsense here.
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6:21 pm
Well of course flogging is bad for you! That is why Our Lord And Saviour suggests it as punishment for sin! That is what is wrong with this country today. Not enough flogging! My housegirl Anita Trayler folded the guest towels wrong for the THIRD time! I assure you if I could have taken a cane to her the first time we would not be having this discussion.
BRING BACK FLOGGING! Jeaus approves!
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8:43 pm
Is Stevie slowly admitting that his blogging has taken over his life?
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9:05 pm
Stephenson, perhaps with your work as an investigative journalist you will be able to use your influence and stature to inspire these pathetic bloggers to raise the low standards they’ve set for themselves.
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9:25 pm
And yes, I am greatly concerned about the social, economic and geopolitical ramifications of Marie Jon’s pic being removed from the Christwire banner. I think that tipped several elections yesterday.
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3:19 pm
I was sad about the Marie Jon situation and honestly I wish her the very best with her career, even though it was a bit harsh to turn her back on a site that helped make her famous.
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12:45 pm
even though I have a limited education as some of you can tell by my blogs,I would like to think that it is a way for ordinary people to speak their minds,weather they have one or not.We might not be the most eloquent writers as you can tell by my spelling but we deserve to be heard even if you can’t understand a thing we say.some of us are not as witty as some of you but we try even if we fail miserably.Please read us if you can ,it’s important to us.I get so excited when I see a praise or condemn check at my blog.Maybe I’m not making any sense but I’m not trying to.God Bless Y’all.
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1:53 pm
Lawd, Lawd… Stephenson, why do you hate America? You’re trying to trample over our First Amendment rights just like the lamestream media did to Mr. Laura! Don’t blame me. Blame God. I didn’t write the Bible. I just read it. Log onto http://gga100.weebly.com/shows-video.html and watch the Savedest man in the history of the Republican party, the Right Reverend Dr. Thurgood Goodlove, as he weighs in on celebrity relationships, your relationships, and all manner of vile disgusting relations without the blessing of marriage. The Right Reverend Dr. Thurgood Goodlove’s show Good Good Advice is blessed by God with an assist from Jesus Christ his own self! Goodlove is the all time sinless streak leader. He has gone 41 consecutive (and counting) years without committing any sin at all – really no sin! He is the most pious man in the world. http://gga100.weebly.com/shows-video.html
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10:14 pm
What I really like about this site, is the morons ‘Billings and Co’ seem to display ‘I’m missing more than a few chromosomes’ in every topic they deliver. Thank god for inbred America.
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11:14 am
As a fellow Christian, I would hope that you see we’re in this together. We face an incredible set of immoral and anti-American agitators who are trying to destroy Christian primacy in this world and if you truly believe in your faith, you’d be more considerate.
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3:48 pm
Aren’t you in favor of oppressing the rights of basic citizens as well as declaring war and wife abuse? You have yet to deny that you don’t follow the advice given by your buddies here, so until you say that ‘they’re wrong’, you’re in favor of abuse and genocide. Doesn’t sound so Christian, does it?
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10:39 pm
Oh there was one thing i did forget to add. Billings :- more than a lover to small animals.
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8:32 am
brother or sister,I don’t know which one,The Truth.I don’t like to think this site makes fun of christians.I like to think I am a good christan.I beleve it is more like christians with a sense of humor.I don’t know if this makes any sense so refer to my last blog.God Bless Y’all.
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11:17 am
Dick, I believe my work follows closely in the footsteps of other great Christian thinkers in America today, from Rev. Robertson to Rev Falwell, to Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family to Tony Perkins of the Family Resources Council, to Peter LaBarbera of American for Truth About Homosexuality to Phyllis Schafly. If you consider me outside the mainstream, then you must think all of them radicals as well. How sad.
Stephenson
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3:58 pm
And who’s to say they aren’t just as batshit insane as you? Ok, maybe not AS much as you, but I’ll be damned if they aren’t crazy.
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3:28 pm
Brother Stephenson,I was not criticizing you.I wouldn’t even know how.I am all new to this ,can’t you tell?I think your great,and so is this site.I was talking about the blogger,The Truths comment.It is good in my opinion for a christian to laugh every once in a while,Isn’t it? We should all have an open mind.Now excuse me please while I go to spell check.God Bless Y,all and you Stephenson.
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7:53 am
Thank you, Dick, for the heartfelt apology. And I wish you all the best in your life. It’s so essential that people with morality have the courage to speak out in these dangerous times. God bless!
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10:02 am
Stevie’s true colors, fuck the bastard who says ‘fuck you’ and those who get pissed off can piss off, but say anything nice and he’ll assume it’s about him.
What a fucking egotistical asshole. Can’t accept the truth and lives in a lie. And apparently WE’RE the ones going to Hell.
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2:24 pm
Brother,The Comedian,Don’t you think it’s funny how some people can push your buttons?Sister Claire please take a Valium or something I’m afraid your going to burst a blood vessel.Brother Stephenson like I said in an e-mail to you,some people just don’t get it.
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