The Meta-Post

           I remember being really proud of my first post. It was about September Eleventh, and I had taken quite some time to construct it. It was first blog post, and I thought I was a natural. This is really for me, this blogging stuff, I thought. But now, I see that blog post, and some others to be honest, as stains on my internet identity. I know I shouldn't be, but I'm almost embarrassed by that post.
           First off, I don't think I wrote about a particularly interesting aspect of 9/11. I told a story of an event that took place ten years ago and reflected on it. I didn't pose a question. I didn't really leave my post open to opinions aside from the "that's a nice story" or "you are right, those people were so heroic." But the point of our blog isn't to have people agree with you. It isn't to have people pat you on the back. The point of our blog is to discuss something, connect it to a text, connect it to an American theme, and pose questions that get people thinking.
           I'd like to say that I fixed this problem right away, but I didn't. For my next posts, I neglected to pose questions, to ask what the reader thought. I ended my Into the Wild post with this sentence: "The movie should compliment the book, not fictionalize it." I ended my post, a post in which I didn't actually quote Krakauer, by restating my opinion. By doing this I closed off my post, making readers and commenters the extra burden of responding to my whole post, not a centralized question. Talk about lacking empathy for the reader. I think I did a much better job of this as the semester progressed. In my most recent post, I ended it with this question: 

"Does the dramatization of this story take away from the power of the film? Should directors be able to claim it as 'based on a true story?' Is this intellectual honesty?"

              I asked a specific question that directly related to something we talked about in class. My only problem with these questions is that I asked three yes or no questions. While they definitely give the commenter the ability to go further than "yes" or "no," I could pose my questions in a better way, just like we talked about for our oral history paper.  

My Rick Perry "Strong" Post.

           As my blunders were brought to my attention by my peers and my teachers, I began to reevaluate my "blogging technique." I shortened my posts, because most people these days don't read anything all the way through. I began spending 5-10 minutes just thinking about layout- How should I space this? Does this picture work better here or here? How can I embed this link so it doesn't look awkward? Sure, the assignment was about writing, but it was just as much about the visual aspects. For this blog right now, I'm thinking about how I can make it visually appealing. 
           My favorite post is on Rick Perry's "Strong" commercial. Writing wise, I'm not sure this is my best work. But I feel like everything came together for this one. I embedded a short video, pulled out a quote, analyzed, argued, and then posed a question to the reader. I'm sure I could even make this post more concise, but this post shows how the aspects of blogging came together for me. A screen shot of the post is to the right.
           The burdens of blogging are unlike any other type of writing. There is no embedding videos or pictures to research papers. I don't have to worry that people won't have the attention span to read my whole paper. But on the internet, these things all come together. Here, the writer, has to have the most empathy for the reader, because that reader can just "X" it out, or click on another link.
          

to pose a question... Did I do a good job of keeping your attention?