As I come closer to joining the Marines, some anxiety is expected, and I just want to see if I can get a sneak peek of what’s to come in boot camp. So I Google blog search “Marine boot camp” and find video clips from potpiegirl‘s blog at clipclip.org that are exactly what I was looking for. Blogging makes little things like wanting to know what boot camp is like possible. These days you can find anything you want on the internet whether you have a Barbie collection and need a special dress that only was available for a month, or want questions about something in the military answered. Whatever you could possibly want is on the internet with the use of web logging (blogging), and now with more people than ever in the blogging world you can even listen to people’s personal problems if you’re interested. The possibilities are endless in this whole other world (wide web). Having all of this information from other people like ourselves makes for lots of biased opinions, but makes for more down-to-earth realizations like people that were at one point just as clueless about Barbie but now know everything there is to know, and can help teach you the Barbie world.
My thoughts on blogging at first were that blogging was pointless and had no significance. But now I see that it’s a great tool if you need to look something up or just want someone else’s ideas or thoughts on the subject. This is one of the things that I love about blogging is the people helping each other. You don’t get the sense of helping from the general public, but in blogs people for the most part must want to help everyone else understand what it is you’re looking for. For instance girlzippy at livejournal.com has a question about raising her savannah monitor, and because I have success with raising my monitor I can give her some insight as to what her monitor’s problem is. When my reptiles have a problem I can find plenty of people that are more than willing to talk my ear off about any reptile of I may have accumulated because of the blogging process. People that blog are looking to learn from or help others by commenting back and forth. This commenting helps build authority which helps determine how much you blog and your status in the blogosphere.
These examples are ok but what happens when the blog is slanted and totally neglects the other side of the argument. “The weblog's greatest strength — it’s uncensored, unmediated, uncontrolled voice — is also its greatest weakness” said in Rebecca Bloods book The Weblog Handbook. This leads to the comments being biased. This happens more often in posts about politics or current events which seem to mesh together most of the time anyways. In the blog Flopping Aces seven authors write about current events, and much like I would they side with the military. They covered the Berkeley incident about the Marines being unwanted and uninvited while recruiting in the schools. These seven have nothing but bad to say about the city council in Berkeley because of the actions they took against the Marines. This is how blogging can be repetitive and bias because at another blog everyone might be supportive of this kind of behavior. Although, in search of a blog in favor of Berkeley’s decision has been fruitless, and it’s not because I didn’t look hard enough believe me I would love to hear the argument. Most of the posts in favor of code pink have been bombarded by comments from the individuals that are pro-militaristic and are accused for treason in other words they have been turned into an “echo chamber”. This topic is an excellent way to show how blogging can potentially be one sided.
But besides how politics and current events in blogs are handled the main focus is to help others, not cut each other down. Now that I have worked with blogs and understand they can be useful in certain situations. If I feel that they are an excellent way to broadcast your voice, and listen to others that do the same.
So now maybe I can start that Barbie collection I always wanted.
