Who Reads Blogs?

Out of all the people in this entire world that has internet access, who really reads blogs? Better question, who really writes them? I personally feel as if blogs are kind  of going out of fashion, sort to speak. Like, I'm sure it's way cooler to have a Tumblr (blog on crack) than just a regular ol' blog on Blogger or Wordpress. And I'm sure that the majority of people who are constantly on the interweb do have a Tumblr over the other more conventional forms of online blogging. The reason why I think this is because in today's internet society, things that are short and sweet, sometimes funny, and full of moving images and graphics are what's being consumed more readily than just plain words. People don't really like to read things online. If something is too long, most would skip it. This is why Facebook and Twitter especially is so popular. Because one can get news on just about anything in 140 characters or less.

But this blog post is about blogs. In the Hindman reading, he talks specifically about political blogs. Now, of course I've known that some people in the world like to blog about politics, but I don't know anyone who would actually read those types of blogs unless they too enjoy shooting the breeze about politics. For blogging, politics don't really come to my mind as readily as say, art, music and fashion. Because people really like to blog about that stuff. Oh and gossip. Celebrity gossip blogs are like the crown jewel of the blogsphere. I'm almost sure (and these are all assumptions, mind you) that more people consume information written on celebrity gossip blogs than they do political blogs. It is just the culture we live in today.

But I digress...again. 

I do agree that blogs do let more and more people express their thoughts and ideas easily to other people. Absolutely anyone can create a blog with just a click of a button. But with millions of blogs floating around cyberspace, how many of those actually get read? I remember my blog days. I pretty much blogged about anything and everything that came into my mind and I have about two followers, both friends of mine, who also had blogs of their own. So naturally, we read each other's stuff and that was it. I realized after a while that it is really hard to keep up a blog when you're one of the little people. It seemed to me that the biggest and most successful blogs are run by professionals. And if not by professionals, then by people with money. Some of the best fashion and makeup blogs are run by fashion and makeup experts, and or models and actresses who are able to easily fall into being experts on those subjects. Successful music blogs and entertainment blogs are maintained by people who are already within the industry in some way or another. Very rarely would you see an ordinary citizen with a really successful blog run. And even though I don't know anything about political blogs, according to Hindman, much of the same goes on with political blogs.

So has the internet allowed for more democracy? I don't know. In a way, it has, because ordinary people have the chance to pose their thoughts and ideas to the world of cyberspace in the hopes of being heard by a mass majority of users. It's kind of like the "American Dream." We each have an opportunity of upward mobility within cyberspace and the higher we go, the more we're heard. But to be honest, I think that only happens in like...one in a few hundred of people. The rest of us will remain unheard no matter how many times we blog. And in that way, the internet isn't all that democratic.