Blogs, human and otherwise
A few days ago, I made a new Blogger blog for random life-stuff that I don't feel like putting here. (Having a "secret" blog makes me feel kind of lame -- it's a daily reminder that I'm not self-confident enough to post everything publicly. But whatever.) Futuristicky doesn't have the Blogger toolbar at the top, but since I created the new one under a different Blogger id, it does. I kind of think the toolbar is ugly, but I've been using the "next blog" button to randomly click through to stranger's blogs, one after another.

I think it's so fascinating to click from one to another, because I get to peek into different people's lives (unless they're in a language I don't know). A random Texas teenager writing in IM-speak, or a woman from Indiana writing about how happy she is being fat. I get sucked in. But I'm amazed at how many of the blogs consist entirely of spam. They're called things like "flooring info" and "1st vacuum" and "FreeGiftWarehouse" and every post and every comment on the page is spam. Random words and a bunch of links. No real content at all. I guess these blogs must be created by computer programs, and something about that is so strange. And they're probably read by other computer programs that figure out things like search-engine rankings. Blogging feels fundamentally human to me, but maybe the machines don't need us at all...