blog genres

i've been teaching a lot about genre this year -- my unit on genre in Persuasion has coincided or at least overlapped iwth my unit on genre in MASS MEDIA AND SOCIETY --

(hey!, my loyal readership insists, this is the *BACK* burner. you can't talk about the content of your classes on here...yeah, yeah, i know, but...

i've been more and more interested in the diversity of emerging genres in the blogging universe.

Kelly blogs about the RANT not as a genre of blog discourse -- but of everyday discourse -- but i do think that ranting is a pretty normative genre in this medium.

the other genre i've been keenly interested in recently is the hello? genre. My brother Daniel included this tag at the end of a recent post:

"BTW: It's really wierd to post ideas without having people read them. I'm always writing a letter or a newsletter page, or updating the web site, or participating in a forum, or sending out an e-mial to my church. In all of these situations lots of people read the stuff (or at least pretend to).

It's wierd, but I like it. Even the fact that I'm writing about my feelings on this has a stench of wierdness.

Ok.. It looks like for one paragraph there I entered into the world of blogging. Don't expect more of that.

(That last statement has the unwritten submect of "You"---Who is You??--That's what I mean about wierd?) "

Or my brother David, before he had Stanley, the fan, wrote:

"hey, if you are not my brother or in my youth group and you read this, would you mind emailing me at bishoprudd at yahoo.com?"

and after several days of nothing:

"by the way, WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE???!!!??

oh yes, i know you're reading this. see that little black box to the left...no, higher up...no, the one with numbers...yeah, that one. that tells me how many people are hitting this site. and it doesn't count every time i come here! so WHO ARE YOU!!!

not that i care, as i've said before, i am here simply for you!"

in my first experiment with blogging, I wrote a "who are you & what am i doing here?" entry, and Marcaus wrote me an email about it -- which i posted to the invisible (and pretty much nonexistent at that time) audience....

Yesterday I read a blog which qualified in the "hello?" genre, but seemed so lonely, and needy and pathetic, that I couldn't bring myself to post it publicly.

I wonder if all blogs go through a state of ambivalence about their identy / role / audience?

Maybe I'll start a blog that collects links to instances of the genre.

YEAH! That sounds like a great way to avoid this depressingly (s)tall(ed) stack of grading...

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well. that's it. its done.

Hello?

if you want to join the team of this blog -- (because you have so much spare time) -- let me know and I'll make you a team member. Minimum membership fees? find one instance of hello? blogging per month. if you lag behind in your fees -- you'll be on probation for a minimum of six months. then we'll have to see about what to do with you...

peace~