There is one word in the internet that I simply can’t stand. One word that is just so wrong, the mere mention of it grates on my nerves like a thousand bad chalkboards. Does anyone still remember what a chalkboard is?

The internet is composed of far more than the World Wide Web, but that is without a doubt the most visible incarnation. Along the way it became something of a fad to publish diaries for the whole world to see. Somewhere along the way these became known as logs, which is fine by me. It’s more masculine to write a log than a diary entry anyway.

This is where the travesty of language justice was concieved. Someone put the words ‘web’ and ‘log’ together and dropped the ‘we.’ Thus was born one of my many pet peeves, the blog.

It’s become fashionable to spew one’s thoughts out for the word to see. No longer are diaries something to be kept secret and hidden, but they are shared in all of their ignoble glory. It seems that a good deal of people like the thought of complete strangers silently observing their lives. There seems to be some kind of thrill associated with it.

The real travesty for me isn’t the word itself, but what it’s come to represent for me; an abundance of poorly written, poorly thought out prose.

Granted there are some great places on the net, like wilwheaton.net. However it’s the overwhelming feeling that writing for an audience has really fallen by the wayside. The audience is merely coincidental, and the prose isn’t any more thought out than a phone conversation between strangers. Is the web just a series of wrong numbers?

I guess I’m a little too conservative at times. I think some diaries should remain private. I really don’t care what anyone had for lunch, or what song was playing on the radio while they were ‘blogging.’

And in the ultimate in hypocrisy here’s another one. A web site with my own little tourist stop on the internet. Well you know what they say, “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.”