To be honest, I hate blogs

I've decided that my first blog post will be about the fact that I hate blogs and have resisted them (as a consumer and a writer) for many years.

I remember when the term "blog" first started being thrown around and how much it annoyed me because it is basically just a new term assigned to an old idea.  Initially, the only people who used the word blog and who actually referenced them, were members of the media.  For some reason, the news media really wanted the blog concept to catch on.  And none of them had any clue that the term originates from the words "web log".  I doubt that most people today are even aware of that.

A blog is essentially just a journal - a poorly organized (in my opinion) collection of writings.  It's a bit like a forum, but worse and more boring because you generally have only one, or a small handful of contributors.

I waited many many years to dive into the blog world because I was really hoping that their format would improve.  It has not.  I find them to be stupidly organized and difficult to navigate & find old entries.  Unless of course, you know exactly what you're looking for.  I've always been a do-it-yourself kind of guy when it comes to software development.  And I've always been able to develop and implement more usable platforms for my needs.  To be clear, blogs are stupid!

Despite the fact that I've worked in technology for my entire adult career, I am usually a slow adopter of technologies.  And being about a decade behind on this bandwagon, is not unusual for me.  I'm kind of old fashioned.  A bit of a purist.  When the Internet started becoming popular, I can remember making fun of people who used their computers to get online.  To me, they weren't "real" computer users because they weren't writing code, getting actual work done, etc.  I was convinced that once the novelty of the Internet wore off, it would fade out or take on a more practical use, entirely owned by other computing purists.  I was wrong.

Another reason why I waited so long is because I know me.  And I know that I will sometimes write a bunch of stuff all at once.  Then I will go months and months without writing a damn thing.  I have waves of productivity, padded by huge chunks of uselessness & laziness.  I enter this endeavor knowing full well that I will probably forget to write blog entries for long periods of time.  With my goldfish memory (as my wife calls it), I will even forget that I have this site.  Then when I do remember, I will forget exactly which service I used and I'll spend hours BINGing my name trying to find the service that hosts my blog site. (I don't use Google.  Google is for communists, but that's a later blog entry).

The past few years, I have come to be a big Facebook user.  I wasn't at first (remember, late adopter), but then it finally got me.  Social media is a really strange and silly world.  There's a lot about it that makes me ashamed to even be a human.  But... it's provided a good forum for my rants.  However, I tend to be long-winded when I rant and Facebook is not good for long writings.  It definitely has a lot of limitations and restrictions.  I consider myself a "Seinfeld" type writer.  You know... the show about NOTHING.  There's no consistency or organization to my writings.  However, there is one constant: I accidentally offend over-sensitive people all the time.  I honestly don't mean to, it just happens.  I have set a record for the most un-friended person on social media.  Seriously, that's no joke.  That being said, I usually don't care when they get offended and part ways with me.  If they are that weak and insecure in their positions that they can't tolerate an opposing viewpoint, I say "good riddance"!.  It is notable, however, that the people who have trouble tolerating my viewpoints are always the people who claim to be proponents of tolerance & acceptance of everyone.  We call these morons: liberals.

But I digress... there's another reason that I hate blogs.  And I don't mean to offend anybody who writes blog entries.  A lot of my friends do.  But, generally speaking (I'm a big generalizer and it gets me in trouble), most bloggers are people who are full of themselves and just like to hear themselves talk.  I think that most blogs go completely unread, as I'm sure mine will.  Whenever I see a blog post, I always think "gee that's great... so you and your mom are pretty much the only people that are going to read your stupid post".  Don't get me wrong, I have enjoyed reading many meaningful and well thought-out blog posts.  They're not ALL garbage.  But the vast majority of them are absolutely pointless.  Bloggers tend to be self-important douche buckets.  You can say that "yeah but... blogging is modern journalism and traditional journalism is a dying media".  Fine... but journalists have always been self-important douche buckets so my point is still valid.

But nonetheless, here I am... "blogging" if you will.  As silly as I think they are, it's hard to argue against the fact that they are very simple to use and provide a zero-effort turnkey solution.  I'm going to try hard to make this particular article the last time that I actually reference the term "blog". People often refer to my writings as "rants" so I'll use that more appropriate term.  You can expect my writings to be sporadic, often unrelated, and usually offensive to some people.  I am an unapologetic rabid conservative American.  I have strong views about just about everything.  But I'm told that it's entertaining to some.  If something I say makes you mad, don't take it personally.  I enjoy differing opinions and I'm always happy to help people understand how & why their wrong (relax, it's a joke).  If something I say doesn't make you mad, hang in there... you'll probably be next.

If you haven't caught on yet, I'm an asshole.  So let this first post set the stage for everything that I write going forward.