The Slice On Blogging and Why This is The Most Important Post on the Blog Right Now

Often times, a blog is started for personal reasons—built out of personal experiences or just a general interest and/or need to comment on a certain topic. According to Carolyn R. Miller Dawn Shepherd in their article "Blogging as Social Action: A Genre Analysis of the Weblog," "They are addressed to everyone and at the same time to no one." Of course, there can be specific blogs for specific topics that may only specifically appeal to a certain group of people but it is absolutely a fact that the genre was created around the desire to be witness. The viewers, purveyors, and the general audience that has propelled the blog into popular usage are "mediated voyeurs" and the consumed media is steeped in the immediate. We want secrets and juicy details—we want those sneaky pictures or videos and we want to be treated to the "authentic." We craved "… glimpses that seem more real because they are secret…" On top of this, blogs seem to be the closest way to get close to someone without having to personally interact with them but it also has the "… hope for connection, for community, and at the same time a more traditional voyeuristic enjoyment of stealth and the possibility of a glimpse of unguarded authenticity." Certainly, we are interested because there are people out there that want us to be interested, "voyeurism could not have become such a common preoccupation of our times without willing objects." They bring attention to themselves and allow their actions be mediated and appropriated and remediated and made real through media coverage and people's reactions to them. Our voyeurism is encouraged.

The other element of immediacy in blogs is the time function. It stacks oldest to newest, making that new, fresh content the most important thing. Sure, you can go back and look at older content but the most important thing is to stay on top of breaking news, breaking feelings, breaking interactions. It makes it real, just as Miller and Shepard insist "the reverse chronological organization of the blog [is] a feature that reinforces the impression that the content is true, or real."