Top Ten Blogger Stereotypes

By Daniel Rigney

As human beings, we think almost entirely in clichés that we pick up from other people who also think almost entirely in clichés. Here are ten of my favorite stereotypical clichés referring to those who choose to communicate to the larger world through weblogs, via what Rachel Maddow likes to call the Internet Machine.

1.       1.  Bloggers wear pajamas all day.

2.       2.  They live in their parents’ basements, even if their parents are dead, or have no basements.

3.       3.  They are motivated entirely by vanity and narcissism.

4.       4. Their value to the culture is to be measured by how much money they make from blogging,  since the omniscient and infallible Market God decides what’s valuable and what isn’t.  In the United States, at least, money is the measure of all things.

6.       5. Most of them are ideologically extreme, whether right or left, and use their blogs mainly for the purpose of ranting.

7.       6. They degrade the quality of discourse by posting unedited writing that competes with the edited and more respectable writing of real journalists.

8.       7. They think anyone cares whether they enjoyed their cheeseburger at Denny’s today.

9.       8. They think anyone reads them.

10.   9. They represent something new in the world, the democratization of publishing, and nothing scares us more than things that are new and democratic.

11.   10. Did I mention they wear pajamas all day?

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