Blogging... in general....

I've had a "blog" of some sort or another since early 2001, although I didn't hear the word "blog" for several years after. In fact, I viewed blogs as entirely different than the personal online journal I kept as an undergrad--they were something that "professionals" did about technology or culture or news, while we mere mortal college students kept online "journals" or "diaries" but I digress. I had found opendiary.com at bored.com or a related site, and got myself hooked up with somewhere to write immediately. I still talk to 3 friends I made on that system fairly often, so it's strengths seemed to be in meeting new people. As my friends moved onto the system (not at my urging) I quickly found out what the biggest problems about blogging are.

Personal blogs are simply excellent at pissing people off. I discovered fairly quickly, once many of my college friends were on the system, that just about anything I wrote about could cause a negative reaction. This seems to be true on both opendiary.com and livejournal.com, where I still have accounts, but seldom write anything. I once posted about having raffle tickets available for friends if they were interested, only to get 25+ comments telling me that I was "shoving my friend's faces in the fact that I had money and they didn't." I still feel like I need to rhetorically qualify that statement that I was required to sell 20 of the suckers and couldn't afford them myself either, but there were people on that list willing to buy them. However, to a one they told me they didn't feel it was "right" after reading other's responses.

So I'm quiet in the blog-o-sphere these days. I love reading and making comments, I'm not entirely sold on writing. It's not that I don't have anything interesting to say from time to time (ask me about my "Jesus up my nose" story) but it IS that:

A) Posting anything academic and tied to my real name seems potentially risky to my career, so I would prefer to remain anonymous (my opinions on several theorists have completely changed in the past 3 years, so having ever officially "published" anything about them would have been foolish at the time)
and
B) I don't really feel like inspiring a "wankfest" over small stuff.

This leaves me here. I'm blogging for a course and I keep a small personal blog on myspace (it's really sad when the most annoying site has privacy controls that I like the most). I use my livejournal account to read several journals and more communities. I've required students in the past to write journal entries--should I move this writing to blogs? Are my students people that write more coherently by hand or online? Are they more reflective in one sphere or the other? Who ARE my students at Wayne State? I'm hoping that with time, and with 6010, that some of these questions will be answered.

In the meantime, here are some blogs I read regularly (also see my del.icio.us for more):
The Ferrett: The Watchtower of Destruction
Cheryl Ball's Blog
Anne Wysocki's Blog
Angie J's LJ
Debunking White: Race Studies/Discussion Community
Gizmodo Technology Blog
Bitch PhD