Sometimes I feel like that guy on the cell phone commercials, talking into thin air. I blog fairly frequently, but generate few - if any - comments, and most of the comments I do generate come from Thursday Thirteen, and are limited strictly to those TT posts.

Steph at And She Knits Too asked an interesting question the other day, and it generated a lot of interest on why people blog if they don’t get any comments.

I guess I thought I’d answer that here, though I did comment over there, too. I don’t blog for an audience. I blog as a personal journal of sorts, a place to record accomplishments and thoughts, to post photos where I can find them, to play with web design, since I have nothing better to do. I blog for fun of it.

I don’t really check the stats often. Right now, it says I’ve had 849 unique visitors, but I’m skeptical. 849 unique visitors, and only a handful of comments on the TT pages? Must be a mistake. Or robots. Though I think those are counted separately… Maybe not, though. In any case, I don’t check them, because I don’t know whether they’re accurate or not. Clearly, I have a silent readership, if there is a readership at all, but since I didn’t start blogging with much intention of gathering comments, I’m not too concerned about it.

Steph mentioned that blogging is a discussion and a community activity. I suppose that’s true… if you have a readership. If not, it’s more like a journal. But sometimes, I, too, wonder why I bother to blog if no one ever reads it. Comments are a nice ego-boost, and frankly, one of the reasons I participate in TT (though I didn’t this week - too much going on.)

However, I’m also a person who rarely comments on another’s blog, though I read a couple dozen. I have little to say, and more, I generally read through a feedreader, and clicking over to the website just to drop off a blah comment like “Ooh! Pretty!” seems lame enough to me… (though funny, I never think it’s lame if I /get/ a comment like that… but maybe I would if I got 30-40 comments a post, I don’t know.) And commenting on super popular blogs (the Harlot, anyone?) seems just as pointless. Putting effort into being lost in the crowd over a comment that really has little enough worth to begin with doesn’t seem like it’s worth the time. I guess I was never someone to chime into the discussion at school, either, though. If you have nothing worthwhile to say, I thought, why bother saying anything?

So I understand both sides of the question. But I wonder… is anyone out there reading this? Drop me a line if you are!

2 Comments »

1. I’m visiting via a link from your comment on the post at “and she knits, too”. So… hi!
   You sure have a spoiled kitty! My cat is way too big and fat to knit a bed for - it would have to be as big as the bathtub!

   Comment by Jen — March 24, 2007 @ 7:13 pm

2. I’m reading… My commenting on blogs tends to be sporadic, unfortunately.

   Comment by Turtleheart — March 27, 2007 @ 9:15 pm

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