Blogging Narcissism

My philosophy with blogging, and the social web in general, is this: if you are one of the more interesting personalities in your peer group, then you’ll entertain an even larger group online. The math is simple: your probability of entertaining another human is already marginally higher than others, not everyone blogs but many people read multiple blogs, so given enough time, you’ll gain a following. (Incidentally, this is related to the pick your peers idea)

Thus, personal blogging requires a certain amount of self-love. We should embrace this, and we should expect that personal blogging will naturally include self-love in the form of personal pictures, personal triumphs, etc.

What we should reject is flat-out narcissism. Does your blog vomit forth numerous uninteresting photos of yourself? Does it include every minute & meaningless detail of your activity on the web? Your blog is not the place to capture that, Facebook is, and guess what? Facebook is smart enough to filter that autophilia out of your friend’s news feeds. Sadly, my RSS reader isn’t as smart.

So, to the several dear friends whose blogs I formerly read, you’re out. Sorry! No hard feelings! You can continue to love yourself online, the Internet is big enough for it, thankfully I can editorialize you right out of my virtual-social window.