A (halfhearted) defense of the weblog:

Reading this essay, I tried to figure out what sort of weblogger I was and decided that unfortunately I was the "Tragically Geek." Oh well.

I do think the writer has a lot of really valid points, and honestly the reason I think comments are good is that I think they facilitate conversation, not just weblogger to reader but also reader to reader. Weblogs by their nature destroy conversation (rather than emailing my friends to say something, I post it), so anything I can do to increase conversation I think is a positive.

I personally enjoy reading my friends' blogs, and I hope they enjoy reading mine, but I can understand that my blog wouldn't appeal to everyone (or possibly to anyone who doesn't know me). And that's fine with me. I honestly don't need the entire city of Chicago reading about what I ate for dinner last night. I love reading book reviews, recipes, restaurant reviews, etc from people whose opinions I trust. That doesn't mean that I read every comment my friends post, either; sorry, Will, but I just don't care that much about Coase's Theorem...

My weblog is a chance for me to hash out how I feel about things for myself, post poems I like, write about movies and things I did today, and generally write something that amuses myself. It's also a chance for me to write in a non-academic style, so I get to use lots and lots of paranthetical clauses. I don't expect that this will appeal to most people, but I put it on the web both because I'd rather type than write and because I can't come up with a good reason not to.

Anyway, I'm not ready to quit yet, though I definitely understand why Ruthie has...

And I do think that TrackBack is the tool of the devil. I adore Google, and anything that messes it up as much as TrackBack does (and for now, that is restricted to certain topics, though I imagine that will change as weblogging gets even more mainstream) gets no points in my book.