Rubenerd

The superfluous is very necessary.
~ Voltaire

This is exactly what I've been saying all along.

As a person who reads tens of blogs on a daily basis through various aggregators, I can say with confidence that posts which include graphics, photos, diagrams, real world experience, humility and a sense of humour along with the text are so much more interesting and engaging and will make me come back for more. There's a topic for a killer novel there.

I also prefer reading posts that are conversational rather than just dry text — if I wanted the latter I'd pick up one of my university textbooks. Such people are missing out on what I consider to be the core strength of the internet: presenting varying and diverse content. What's the point of changing mediums while being tied to the limitations of what you used before?

ASIDE: I didn’t think this one quote from Voltaire would turn into a rant about the boring state of blogging. Perhaps I could see it coming subconciously and my mind tricked me into posting it to set this in motion. Motion rhymes with horseshoe. Wait… no it doesn’t.

I suspect much of this stems from the fact many people just don't consider comedy, humour, comedy, photos, personal experience or a sense of humour professional; how stuffy. People like why the lucky stiff push the envelope in randomness, quirky sidebars, diverging threads of conciousness and awesome graphics alongside his text, but he's in a minority. As in a one in a million minority. It's a shame.

All this I've said before; what I'm fascinated with is that Voltaire was a blogger and understood this. Do you reckon his blog is still online after all this time? The Internet Archives might be the place to look. What was his webhost? Did he have translations of his posts? Did he have hairstyle instructions?