Blogosphere Magazine
While escaping from the house this morning on a mission to buy groceries, I happened upon a magazine I first saw a little over a year ago, called “Blogosphere”. After reasoning with myself for a few moments – justifying quite possibly the most expensive magazine ever seen by the human eye – I picked it up and added it to the morning haul, alongside the newspaper, soup, bread, and various other bits and pieces.
It turns out the magazine is quite interesting – it’s filled with interviews with successful bloggers – talking about how they started out, who they were influenced by, what they have learned along the way, and so on – their story.
While skimming through the magazine, it occurred to me that I have been writing for at least a decade longer than any of the people being interviewed. I also have pretty extreme views about what constitutes a “blog” (I know, I know – I have a chip on my shoulder about it). I smiled to myself – imagining how unprintable an interview with me would become – disregarding all of the niche blogs as self publicist marketing morons, and tearing into the myopic millennial self-aggrandizing “look at me/look where I am” photo journals. Then of course I would drift off to rant about re-bloggers on Tumblr, and the death of originality. Readers would visit my blog purely to vent their anger – all perceiving the slights as attacks on them personally.
One of the interviews – with a male blogger – does look interesting. A by-line on the article makes note of the death threats he has received, purely for expressing unobjectionable opinions. I’ve typically only seen that sort of behaviour at Reddit. Anybody stupid enough to express an opinion about anything on Reddit opens themselves to threats involving farm animals, knives, guns, and all manner of imaginative endings.
It made me laugh that the cover photo of the magazine is of a pregnant blogger, sitting in a corn field, with her sequined dress unbuttoned all the way down – because everybody does that, don’t they. I’m not questioning the revealing nature of the photo at all – I’m just laughing at the contrived situations photographers dream up. Did anybody see the argument last month about Grazia magazine, who edited a model’s (quite ridiculous) hair to better fit the cover? Quite why the stylist or photographer thought hair that looked like a TV aerial was a good idea in the first place is a mystery, and quite how the magazine editors thought they would get away with it is another mystery.
The world has gone image consciousness mad. Nobody can take a “real” photo any more. Even the latest iPhones have filters to remove the background – to make it look like you were in the sort of studio used in 1980s SLR camera instruction books. Of course the “look” of the photos is “new”. Everything has to be “new” – you know, instead of “real”. Contrived photos of clothing hauls, dinners in boutique restaurants, and visits to secluded beaches, reading paperback books while sitting among perfectly arranged sea shells. It’s all so false, so shallow, so fabricated.
I’ll just keep on sharing my thoughts, and the days of my life. I’ll keep on with the people watching, and the commentary on whatever happens to be on my mind on a given day. At least you know the things I post are what I think – not what I think you want to see.