Thursday, January 19, 2006

Blogging [is] as being part of the community

I strongly disagree with Roba's blog on the part suggesting that we don't blog to be part of the community. Let us look at the definition of what constitute a community : According to the American heritage dictionary definition, a community is a group of class having common interest. In my opinion, Jordan Planet consists of a group of class, that is bloggers, having common interest, that is blogging about themselves, their country, their culture, and their religion, and many other variety of things that interests that particular community.

To say that blogging isn't related to being part of one's community is in my opinion wrong. If it is so then why are you here [Roba?] and on toot and on few other sites? Isn't because you feel that you can relate to this class and because you have common interest with this class.

If it was otherwise, then you would still be blogging for yourself in some kind of unknown undisclosed location on the internet and the net result would be that no one will know about you and you will not know about anyone else.

Perhaps there are entries on Jordan Planet that don't satisfy your taste or my taste, but that is the crux of blogging, it was never meant to satisfy anyone except the person that is writing the entry himself or herself.

There is no one site on earth that will guarantee to have entries in it that will satisfy each and every taste, if you find one let me know about it. People come in every color and shape, they have different characters and different interests.

We can never dictate to them that unless they are going to produce an interesting blog then they shouldn't blog at all, on the contrary, we should be encouraging them to blog about anything and everything that inspires them or interests them irrespective of how trivial that entry might be to you or to me or to whomever is reading the blog.

Look at the newspaper for example : Some people buy the newspaper to read the obituaries, others are interested in reading their horoscopes, some want to know about the weather, or the airport flights schedule, some interested in international politics while others read about the local and regional politics.

In other words, different people have different reasons for reading different blogs. For me, I loathe pictures, don't ask me why, I just hate them period. I usually skip through them wherever I find them.

That is why I'm an avid reader of the Wall Street Journal, it doesn't have any pictures, and on those rare occasions that they find it compulsory to put a picture, they would draw it as a sketch and not as a picture taken by camera.

I agree that there have been plethora of entries coming through the Jordan Planet during the past sixty days or so, but many of these entries are unique in their own way. Under no circumstances will we be able to judge as to which entry is worth keeping and reading and which entry needs to be jettisoned.

I do follow some of your rules, when I don't have anything to blog about I usually refrain from blogging, I do exercise my own blogging censorship, but that is me and I can't tell any one else when they should or shouldn't blog, since what may seem trivial to me could be of paramount importance to someone else.

I think that there is no clear cut definition as to what blogging should be all about, it is in my opinion like writing without borders, that is why sometimes we write in such a language that might be interpreted by some people as foul or unbecoming of a traditional society as the Jordanian society, but again who decides what, and where do you draw the line of what is considered offensive and what is considered assertive!

I personally don't find any topic to be considered taboo, be that sex education, or what have you, I'm willing to engage any topic irrespective of how bizarre or taboo it may sound.

If some one doesn't like to read it they always have the option of of scrolling down or hitting their delete button, and they wouldn't have to worry about it any more. I think that I have veered too much above and beyond the main topic , but yes, blogging is as being part of the community and yes blogging is as being part of specific class that we have common interest with one another.[I.e community]

2 comments:

Roba said...

Hatem, of course blogging is a part of a community. That is what keeps blogging going.
That's not what I meant when I said that. I said it is wrong to blog in order to be a part of a community- you blog because you have something to say, or because you enjoy it, and not because you want to "fit into a group".
And I had no mention of taste.. of course blogs are different and cheers to that. I was strictly refering to basic stuff, most of which I believe isn't a variable when it comes to quality.

Anonymous said...

Hatem, I think one important aspect of blogging, esp JP, is that it introduces your community to others. I can refer curious Western friends if mine, who don't want the tired media stereotypes anymore, to learn about Jordan from Jordanians like them.

As an American in Jordan, I realized that I have no idea how the Jordanian generation after me thinks! They are either asleep when I visit their moms or I pass them in cars. I have been amazed to see the sociological changes in Jordan over the last decade, and how your generation is spanning what in that time. It took 4 times that long in the US.