The Devil Loathes Bloggers

The blogosphere was all a-titter recently about this Page Six item regarding Vogue editrix Anna Wintour's disdain for the word "blog":

"They are expanding the Vogue Web site and getting more involved with the Internet. But Anna hates the word 'blog' so much, she refuses to call anything on her site a blog and has charged her staff with coming up with a new word that isn't as garish-sounding. She wants it ASAP - in time for launch."

Although I personally wouldn't describe the word blog as garish, I don't disagree with the imperious Ms. Wintour's aversion. Words like "nerdy" and "vaguely embarrassing" seem more apt when applied to blog, bloggers, blogging or any variant thereof. Let's face it: it's not exactly dignified, and it entirely lacks elegance.

I always feel compelled to do a little scrape, shuffle, smirk when mentioning that I have a blog. At family gatherings or art openinings, people smile at me indulgently, amused by the mere utterance of such a goofy sounding word. As far as I can remember, its mention has never once commanded respect. Usually there is a vague nod of fuzzy understanding and little follow through to find out what it actually is, or how they might read it.

This reaction is in opposition to what a lot of blogs are though... while I try not to take the whole endeavor too seriously, I am attached to my blog, and the scads of blogs I read, as an outlet for ideas and opinions, many of them freed from the traditional (and sometimes suffocating) conventions of expository and/or journalistic writing. (With that freedom comes peril, yes, but that's a topic for another post.)

The fact that the word blog has geeky/tech connotations is limiting. People don't feel like they can't pick up a newspaper and at least try to read it, but often when faced with the prospect of blog-reading, many are are too intimidated by it's geeky provenance. My mom is a good example of this. Even though she loves herself some eBay, the whole blog concept is a bit too disorienting for her, so she's only even slightly aware of Personism, which is kind of a bummer because I do put a lot of effort into it.

What's the alternative though? Journal? That reminds me of the faux-leather bound volume I kept in junior high - the one with a unicorn on the front. Web log? Those two words, progenitor of the word blog itself, also form awkwardly on the tongue. (And I think that awkwardness was at least part of the reason that the term blog was created, back in the day.)

Comments

[Shane Lavalette]

Don't "journal" bash, Jen. Haha.

[Jen Bekman]

Shane, no diss intended! It works for you, seems like. Maybe it's a generation gap - do handwritten journals seem like distant artifacts to you young'uns? That'd be sad.

Greg, somehow I think that none of those alternatives will prove to be quite right for Anna. (Or me for that matter.) I'm actually genuinely curious to see what alternative they come up with.

Of course now blogs are evolving and looking less and less... bloglike. So maybe they won't have to call it anything. It's just "online content". (Gag! Content is a problematic word too...)

[Greg Wasserstrom]

i'm also interested to see what they come up with. i think you're right though.. if they're clever about the design of the page, they definitely wouldn't have to call it anything. and as far as the journal things goes, i never kept one until i started writing all my various blogs in the past year or so. i don't know what the tweens are doing. someone should look into that because after all, so go the tweens, so goes america.

[Greg Wasserstrom]

here are some suggestions i sent to vogue, though they have not returned any of my repeated emails or phone calls.

1. the telegraph
2. daily dispatches
3. smoke signals
4. enema
5. i hate myself

[Shane Lavalette]

Haha, only joking. Look what I came across (and, Jen, maybe this will sway you to like my 'journal' despite memories of those faux-leather bound unicorn days):

"Although journal is sometimes used as a synonym for "magazine," in academic use, a journal refers to a serious, scholarly publication, most often peer-reviewed."