{"id":111,"date":"2002-06-05T17:14:00","date_gmt":"2002-06-05T22:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=111"},"modified":"2002-06-05T17:14:00","modified_gmt":"2002-06-05T22:14:00","slug":"whos-a-warblogger-blogotypology-considered","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=111","title":{"rendered":"Who&#8217;s a warblogger? Blogotypology considered"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My good buddy Doc Searls <a href=\"http:\/\/doc.weblogs.com\/2002\/06\/05#wereAllBlogmongers\"> says I&#8217;m<br \/>\na warblogger, not a techblogger<\/a>.  Truth is I&#8217;ve never thought of<br \/>\nmyself either way.  I had only the vaguest notion what a `warblogger&#8217;<br \/>\nis until I followed his links to the definitional discussion.  I write<br \/>\nstuff related to 9\/11 because it&#8217;s one of the definining events of our<br \/>\nday, but I didn&#8217;t start blogging particularly because I wanted to<br \/>\ncomment on the war.  Y&#8217;all may have noticed that I write about sex and<br \/>\nguns a lot.  Nothing about witchcraft yet, but give it time&#8230; :-)\n<\/p>\n<p>The blogotypological distinction that makes the most<br \/>\nsense to me is &#8220;thinker&#8221; vs. &#8220;linker&#8221;.  I know which of those<br \/>\ncamps I&#8217;m in. I&#8217;m a thinker, an essayist. I&#8217;d rather write about<br \/>\nmy original thinking than reflect or index other peoples&#8217; words.<br \/>\nVodkaPundit was right on when he compared me to  Steve Den Beste over at  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.denbeste.nu\/\">U.S.S. Clueless<\/a>.  <a href=\"http:\/\/instapundit.com\/\">Glenn Reynolds<\/a> is, of course, the king of the linkers (though<br \/>\nhe goes into thinker mode off-blog).<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d actually say there&#8217;s a<br \/>\nthird setting on this switch; &#8220;diarist&#8221;, someone who blogs<br \/>\nessentially as a public journal. Like Den Beste, I&#8217;m not a diarist; you wouldn&#8217;t find ramblings about my beagle or my infant daughter here even if I had either.<br \/>\nMy personal life appears in this blog only insofar as it&#8217;s the<br \/>\nframe in which my ideas happen. I can imagine writing personal journalism, but it&#8217;s not my default style.<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.asparagirl.com\/blog\/\">Asparagirl<\/a>, on<br \/>\nthe  other hand,  is a  good paradigmatic example of a diarist; her ideas are embedded in a narrative of her life.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, people do mix modes.  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lileks.com\/bleats\/\">James Lileks<\/a> is<br \/>\na diarist\/thinker, or thinker\/diarist,  and<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/andrewsullivan.com\/\">Andrew Sullivan<\/a><br \/>\noscillates among all three modes in a (dare I say it?)<br \/>\ngaily promiscuous fashion. But most bloggers seem to<br \/>\nhave a base style that&#8217;s one of these three, from which they<br \/>\nmay make occasional excursions but to which they<br \/>\ninevitably return.<\/p>\n<p>As Doc points out, I&#8217;m not a techblogger either.  Technology<br \/>\nevangelism is what <em>I<\/em> do off-blog; <em>Armed and<br \/>\nDangerous<\/em> is for the writing that doesn&#8217;t fit that box, just<br \/>\nas a lot of other bloggers treat the medium as an outlet for<br \/>\nwhatever is not <em>their<\/em> day job.  Maybe that&#8217;s another<br \/>\ndistinction we need; `problogger&#8217; (someone like Jonah Goldberg<br \/>\nwhose blogging is a seamless extension of his day job) versus `playblogger&#8217; (someone who blogs to let off steam that their day-job channels don&#8217;t have a good vent for).<\/p>\n<p>While the best I can say about the term `warblogger&#8217; is that<br \/>\nit&#8217;s not completely useless, `techblogger&#8217; seems to me to be a<br \/>\ncategory that&#8217;s likely to survive as the medium matures.  So<br \/>\ndoes the thinker\/linker\/diarist distinction, and the playblogger\/problogger flag bit.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll end with the obligatory abjurgation not to take any such<br \/>\nterminology too seriously.  We&#8217;re all writers, a prickly bunch,<br \/>\nand we&#8217;re all to some degree category-busters by nature or<br \/>\nwe wouldn&#8217;t be here in the infancy of a new medium at all. Still&#8230;I suspect that more definite blogotypes will emerge as people explore the space of available styles and discover which ones<br \/>\nare most effective at communication.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My good buddy Doc Searls says I&#8217;m a warblogger, not a techblogger. Truth is I&#8217;ve never thought of myself either way. I had only the vaguest notion what a `warblogger&#8217; is until I followed his links to the definitional discussion. I write stuff related to 9\/11 because it&#8217;s one of the definining events of our&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=111\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Who&#8217;s a warblogger? Blogotypology considered<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}