Friday, June 1, 2007

Advantages and Disadvantages of Blogs

The clicking of the keys typing at fast rapid passes trying to get their story better than all the others is just how fast blogging is growing. Blogs have grown rapidly in the past few years to pass news on to people or even to share life stories with people around the world. Although, there are disadvantages, there are many advantages that over shines the disadvantages to make blogging a useful tool for one’s writing. According to Wikipedia, a blog is described as a website where entries about the author’s topics are made and displayed in reverse order. Blogs consist of news and subjects like food, politics, news and events going on in the author’s life.
Blogging is a way I get to write and not have to see the person’s face of disbelief or see them panic when I make a grammatical error. This past quarter I have grown to enjoy writing and developing better skills of writing. The type of blogs we write are about our lives, which I find easy to write about because it is first hand, and I can explain it much easier than if I heard the story from someone else. I have gained more confidence in my writing this quarter because of the comments that are left on my blogs, even if it is a comment saying they can relate to my post. Although all the commenter is saying is that they can easily relate to your blog, it means that they took the time out of their day to read your post that you worked very hard on.
Defective Yeti was a big influence in our class because it had many advantages but also had its disadvantages too. One lesson I learned from Defective Yeti was that, even though you are commenting you must take your time to make good grammatical structured sentences. When reading comments people get the first impression of you by your comment and how it is written. Like on Defective Yeti there were numerous errors made by some of our classmates and the readers pointed it out to us and even went as far as saying we were not well-educated. This example also has its disadvantages because when only reading a comment people do not get the sense of who you are until they go read more of your work.
An advantage of blogging is that news travels very fast because of the speed of the internet and it helps people promote their writing to other people. Blogging is a way to express your feelings, when people are shy and do not want to talk to others about their problems they find peace through writing. It is also a way to catch up on the gossip going on in the life of the blog’s author. Our class blogs are a good example of the advantages of blogging because it has made our writing better and has built our confidence to share our writing with others, like Melinda’s blog on the stress in her life and Janelle’s blog about her traveling experiences.
Blogs can also help relieve stress by writing about your happenings in your life because when you are writing about something you are releasing it for someone else to read; thus, making it seem like someone is listening to your story. Many people write blogs as a way to deal with problems in their life so they can express their feelings.
News being spread quickly is also a disadvantage because it could possibly develop into a problem. When posting on the internet, people can’t get their point across because sometimes the reader can’t read the expressions on the author’s face. Sometimes when people do not get taken seriously because of what they wrote they may tend to become guarded and possibly lose the desire to write.
The Virginia Tech shooting is another example of good and bad things about blogs. The good side to blogs in this event was that it helped police try to find the shooter. It is quick and resourceful technique law enforcement uses to help with cases. Although sometimes because of blogs people are wrongly accused for things they did not do. There was a male student who attended Virginia Tech that fit the description of shooter and because of his blog authorities began to believe it was this man. In this case blogs are a good thing because it helps possible find the harmful person yet it also can cause major confusion when someone is wrongly accused.
When searching around on blogs I find that it is interesting to come across people who use writing to express their feelings because it makes me sit and wonder what I would do in their shoes or helps me better understand what it would to be them. Many people use blogs to tell stories, to give tips from when they went through situations or even use blogs as a learning experience for a class.
In this past quarter I have found that I enjoy blogs because it has helped me grow as a writer. Not only does it help me boost my confidence but it helped me with my grammatical errors. Blogs are growing rapidly and is becoming a favorite trend among different ages. Blogs help promote things like candidates for the next election and even give you tips on how to release stress. Overall I believe blogging is good, but people should be careful. When writing on the internet people don’t get to see you on first imprecation; therefore, one’s writing should be excellent. Like the old wise saying, never judge a book by its cover.