All the Lonely Bloggers: Where Do They All Come From?

Father McKenzie writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear
No one comes near.
Look at him working. Darning his socks in the night when there’s nobody there
What does he care?

All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong?

According to the latest academic twaddle, bloggers are all like Father McKenzie.

Either that, or we’re Eleanor Rigby perhaps --

Eleanor Rigby died in the church and was buried along with her name
Nobody came
Father McKenzie wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from the grave
No one was saved…

Thus sayeth Michael Keren, a professor at the University of Calgary - a teacher of “communications and culture” (Canadian alert: these are your tax dollars at work). You remember those gut courses designed to allow colleges to collect tuition from the intellectually impaired? Who in his right mind takes those commuciation classes from “professors” like Keren? Jocks, perhaps? Or the “special” admissions the schools let in for their diversity photo ops?

“Was Eleanor Rigby a blogger?” asked an accompanying press release [to his new book], referring to the 1966 Beatles song in which the eponymous character picks rice off the floor after a wedding, stares wistfully out a church window and eventually dies.

Eleanor probably would’ve blogged about cats and had a rare old time. But the professor knows better; he sees through this blogging phenomenon to its true root:

[In] “Blogosphere: The New Political Arena,” [Keren] suggests individuals who bare their souls in blogs are isolated and lonely, living in a virtual reality instead of forming real relationships or helping to change the world.

“Bloggers think of themselves as rebels against mainstream society, but that rebellion is mostly confined to cyberspace, which makes blogging as melancholic and illusionary as Don Quixote tilting at windmills,” the author says.

I’d like to tilt his windmill for him; make it list about ninety degrees starboard. What arrogant ignorance flows from the swilling pens of these academons! (as One Cosmos has christened such charlatans).

Want to hear some more about your pitiful self, as described in this book?
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Keren praises the Internet as a great place for self-expression, but he also suggests that blogs often have the opposite effect by creating feelings of loneliness for those who aren’t lucky enough to reach “celebrity” status.

“Many of us end up like Father McKenzie in the ‘Eleanor Rigby’ Beatles song, who is writing a sermon that no one is going to hear,” he suggests. “Some of us are going to be embraced by the mainstream media, but the majority of us remain [sic] in the dark, remain in the loneliness.”

“Celebrity status?” Not exactly. But on the other hand, about four thousand people a day wander through the Gates of Vienna (fewer on weekends, since people aren’t at the office trying to look busy).

Our readers come from all over the world, though the Spanish speakers are a bit spotty, as are the Asians. Thus, I was glad to see Babalu link to us recently[they describe themselves as “an island on the net without a bearded dictator”]. Meanwhile, the Baron’s long-term goal is to build a readership in the Indian blogosphere, one of his special interests.

Admittedly, when we first started I was skeptical that we’d gain enough audience to make it worthwhile. Back then, I laughed out loud when Wretchard mentioned in passing that we’d soon be seeing a thousand hits a day. Now, the links alone number well over a thousand, and they are myriad indeed. Now, other blogs link to us in languages I can’t read, in alphabets I don’t understand.

How many students do you think flock to “Dr.” Kener’s classes? And how many stay to argue with him and/or each other? How many are willing to tell him when he hasn’t got his facts straight? Our readers do so frequently - and so we learn. In fact, I've learned more history since starting this blog than I could have imagined. Every day, I suspect a bit more that what I don't know that I don't know is a rather large territory indeed.

Bloggers are “lonely”?? This poor sod lives in the echoing ivory towers of mediocrity, teaching “communnication and culture.” If he’d pop over to the Psychology Department, they could explain the theory of projection to him.

Need I say it?

Don’t buy the book.