Questions and answers on this blog

Anne Frank

A few weeks ago, I was asked questions about blogging by the author of Shadowsignals blog.

Shadowsignals does not exist anymore, so I’ll publish them here. Beginning here, after my introduction, with the first question, and my reply to it.

Dear Kitty Blog started on 2 January 2005. Then, it was at ModBlog.

However, ModBlog was bought by a bigger corporation who gradually let it go down the drain.

Eventually, my whole blog, and thousands of other blogs, were gone there, without warning.

So, now I am at Blogsome. I did manage to transfer some, though a minority, of my blogs from ModBlog to Blogsome, using the Google cache.

Question: You call your blog “Dear Kitty” in reference to the way Anne Frank addressed her diary.

Despite the fact that blogging is now mainstream, do you feel that there is still a subversive element to the process for the bulk of bloggers or is it mainly a childish “look at me” play for attention?

Answer: I think the answer to this question is basically dependent on the individual who does the blogging.

There is a very big variety in blogs.

Some bloggers write only on their domestic cats; some politicians blog only on their local council, or wherever they are members of.

Some teenagers write mainly about being in love; or about school; or about quarrels. Some bloggers write mainly on music; on Internet technology, etc . etc.

There definitely CAN still be a subservive element in blogging, but it is up to the individual bloggers to do that.

I wonder a bit about the word “still” here.

I think right from the beginning of blogging, there was a big variety in content between various bloggers, some not subversive, some a bit subversive, some a lot subversive. And basically, though there are many more blogs now, it probably is still that way.

Maybe many blogs will change somewhat, or a lot, from what they are at the moment.

Anne Frank’s diary is interesting in this respect. She originally intended it as a fairly standard schoolgirl’s diary, about fellow schoolgirls, (potential) boyfriends, teachers, etc.

However, soon, she was not at school any more, she had to hide in the “Achterhuis”.

That meant the character of her diary changed: political and war issues from day to day; her views on the background of the world war; looking at a tree, and birds sitting on it, in a backyard which she probably would have passed without writing about when she started her diary, etc.

From the beginning I intended to deal with a variety of issues as they would come up (so, more like Anne Frank’s diary as it eventually turned out, then as she intended right at her starting point).