A history of awkward blogging
What happened was there was this girl — and a magazine.
About 10 pages into a local magazine that summer in ’00, I came across in the comments section an extended critique of the entire publication from a girl I ought to hide behind initials M.A. She had every bit of the indignant rationale in her prose, breaking down the mag’s strengths and weaknesses, kind of like a verbose Condescending Wonka with a thick slab of pa-cool but getting away with it.
I basically thought she was pa-cool without the pa so with my Edsamail account, I e-mailed her to ask why she did what she did. Short story made even shorter, we got to talk on the phone lengthily about how she liked Oasis and why she was “going up to the mountains to study writing.” She eventually suggested I blog my thoughts instead of calling her up. Burn, I know. The next day, I created a Blogger account and reserved the URL drumsolo.blogspot.com.
The blog, as I remember it, was like an ancient bro manuscript. I would write about which videogames my guy friends and I (as if I had any non-guy friends that time) played that summer — who I beat in Bomberman and Soul Caliber that day (I was too proud to blog about losses), what Little Caesar’s buy one, take one pizza promo meant to us, which mossy boulders we could leap from in Ateneo’s rock garden, and other equally unexciting things. It was a habit I found myself relaxing to almost every night after school.
Blogging may have socially isolated my freshman self but it gave me that little space where I could be boring and self-serving without having to worry about approval or page hits. But to each his or her own. It’s possible to have that Courier New-fonted fashion blog and still produce something dope. Blogs can also be of the quiet and introspective kind — not necessarily hipster, just laidback and low-key, the LiveJournal type that’s followed by nobody. Your blog, your say.
Blogging can also get you into trouble, the kind that doesn’t make you feel cool and badass. If I remember correctly, I wrote a profile on this dude I was classmates with. Let’s just say I talked smack about his over-gelled hair and compared him to a fat Zeus, which wasn’t really witty or cool or anything. It was just pretty random and unkind. Short story cut even shorter again, my classmate’s gang discovered the post and I got punched in the face the next day while drinking water from my Coleman — like the whole world even saw that post for him to care so much about it. That night, though, I think I wrote another entry, this time on his neck. Lesson learned: You can actually manipulate people online into punching you the day after. Also: Lock some of your blog entries. And secretly blogging about a bruised face was still better than secretly crying about a bruised face.
As to the girl who got me into blogging, I recall receiving a postcard with her photo attached, and I don’t know; I think I kind of just moved on from there — as I did with blog stabbing, eventually. I guess, in time, you just stopped whining about people online and started chilling with people offline. I now have this little music blog and I can say it feels cool to be able to write about things you honestly enjoy — not as a blogger or reporter, but as a bro who just wants to give worthy things the worthy writing they deserve. #naks
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@ralphmendo / bropm.blogspot.com
