I like to read blogs. No, I take that back. I like to read interesting blogs. And I prefer reading the blogs of people I know, but have occasionally ventured onto blogs of people I don’t. While blog-surfing, I’ve noticed that it seems a lot of bloggers out there are stay-at-home moms, and their primary blogging topic is their kids.
Now, not to attack anyone in particular or hurt anyone’s feelings (I’m sure I’ll lose a few readers with this post), but those blogs are usually pretty boring. Even if you’re friends with the person, if you don’t have a vested interest in the children (i.e. their uncle or grandmother), you don’t really care that much. Unless it’s something really interesting (like my friend who recently adopted and wrote about her new son), I’ll usually only skim the entry.
This is not to say that there aren’t kid blogs out there I think are very interesting, or that it’s never okay to write about your kids. If the blog is primarily to keep your family up-to-date on your family over long distances, it makes sense to blog about your kids. Or if once and a while your child does something really spectacular or interesting, and you want to share it with everyone, go for it (i.e. posting a video of your child’s first steps).
And kid-blogging is not the only blogging sin. There are also those people who only blog when they want to post pictures of their most recent trip. One would think by looking at their blog that they are constantly on vacation. While these posts try to make up for a lack of interesting content by using pretty pictures, they really only amount to glorified slide shows. And I don’t mean the cool, movie-type slideshows. I mean the boring, sit-in-the-dark, use-a-clicker-attached-to-the-machine-to-advance-the-slides slideshow.
Both fortunately and unfortunately, with the advent of the web, everyone can publish their thoughts for the world to see. Many people think of blogs as online journals, and looking at it that way, it shows the difference in the way people see the world. Some write the events of the day, while others write their thoughts and feelings, and insights gained. I think a healthy blend of both is what makes a good blog (leaning more towards the thoughts, feelings, and insights side). I don’t claim to have the most interesting blog in the world, but I like to think that I post moderately interesting content a majority of the time. But hey, that’s me. What do you think?
