Prepare To Be Blogged: Thoughts From The Pirate Blogosphere

Michael Spencer, the Internet Monk, writes in “Prepare To Be Blogged: Thoughts From The Pirate Blogosphere” that blogging is kind of like pirate radio:

I always loved the idea of pirate radio. Here at the school where I work, we used to have boys occasionally broadcast on a pirate radio station in the dormitory. I loved the idea of some kid with a radio station under his bed, playing illegal music, making fun of the administration. I wished I’d been able to do something that exciting when I was a teenager. There was something wonderfully subversive and dangerous about broadcasting where you weren’t supposed to have a voice, right there alongside the real stations.
. . .
The blogosphere confers its own kind of credibility, quite different from the real world. Who is the Internet Monk, anyway? Every so often, someone turns up here at OBI and wants to meet the iMonk. I have to come to terms with the fact that Michael Spencer and the iMonk are two very different persons, almost like Batman and Bruce Wayne.
. . .
Listen. In the real world, I am nobody. Here in my town, I don’t preach to twenty people on Sunday. No one even thinks I’m interesting. I have one of the smallest churches in the county. But on the internet, it’s different. Internet Monk has given me an audience far larger than I could ever find otherwise.

And what kind of blogging does the iMonk think is most powerful?

The confessional blogger has a special place in the blogosphere. It was Augustine who placed his theological journey in the form of Confessions, setting a model for many of us who call ourselves “confessional bloggers.” By “confessions” I do not mean the reformed statements of doctrine, but the first person account of our human journey seen from the inside. The accounting of our thoughts, doubts and questions. The reporting of feelings and emotions, and not just propositions.
. . .
Millions of bloggers say things in print for the eyes of fellow readers they would never say in church, in the pulpit or to someone they know at work. Why are we attracted to this? Voyeurism? Boredom? Or is it simply because it is an authentic fingerprint of the human journey. It’s an expression of real faith. Like poetry, it might be criticized for its content, but it stands or falls on its “trueness” to human nature.

I myself am not ready to “bear my soul” on my blog. Maybe it is because I am afraid that people will not think I am as perfect as I pretend to be ;) or maybe I fear it will just be amunition to those who already know I am not perfect. More likely, it is because I am Norwegian, and we just don’t talk about those things.

Take the time to read the rest of his article.