Why does one keep a blog?

It has become a customary thing to sit and write on a public medium, be it a forum or a site or a blog. Apart from the quest of popularity and the need to make oneself heard, I asked myself what it is exactly deep down that makes us want to do it.

Could there be an overwhelmingly personal, human dna-related explanation for the mounting number of terrabites dedicated to lonesome soliloquies?

In a world where the nagging frustrations are dealt with in a desultory manner, and cyberspace is quick replacing the village square, the first thing that comes to my mind is, Thank God for the Internet, because at least some contact is achieved in this fashion and something is always better than nothing in my book. However, this explanation does not go too far below the surface of things -- which is where we want to be.

I think there is a more immediately recognisable source for the urge to cyber-blab and waffle and it is rooted in peoples' natural gregariousness. Indeed, isn't the forum, or a frequented blog, a recreation of the erstwhile community with all its components?

Less the physical presence and contact, of course, the cyber community is where one is heard simply because one is there, part of that community; and one exists and is acknowledged as such by that fact itself. In our overwhelmingly urban society being heard is to exist and vice-vera; it's a way of rising above anonymity.
On the other hand, it is no plain sailing as communicating / talking / touching others, requires a strategic approach with set tactics and rules of operation.
Not so with communities -- the small size, the customs inherent, the stories that (used to) emanate from each community are (were) legion. Of course, one of the staples of such communities is that no-one is anonymous and nothing is secret!


So, have we reached the point where the quest for privacy and anonymity has taken us to the other side where we now look for that locality, the sense of "growing old together"?

I think so. And there comes the frustration of cyber-contact, a frustration that can only be ultimately washed away through actual contact.

The blog, is one's own tiny little forum, a little voice unhindered by custom, rules, lies, or circumstance other than our own. But it's one voice amongst millions of others, many more added every second.

Some voices are lucky and around them, forms a community. So what of it's virtual, it is a community of sorts, and soemthing is always better than nothing...