BloggingOn 4.1 – Wull-kuht. James Wull-kuht.

Or is it Wall-kaht? Tee-vah ot The-vah? Hun-tah or June-tah?

My first foray into all-things-wall-cot, was this post, right here. It seemed more like a short Vanity Fair article with hyperlinks than your run-of-the-mill bloggy-blog blog post. I was reassured to find that JW doesn’t suffer from the same lack of vision that his colleagues over at HuffPo tend to fall victim to… He’s not just some lame old Journalist blogging, while wishing he weren’t. How do I know? He also writes about less-than-consequential crap. Like, how Law & Order just isn’t as good as it used to be, and other pop culture perfunctories.

Speaking of pop culture, what can you say about making an obscure pop culture reference, and then hyperlinking to its explanation? (I already did it in this post, and back in my first post, too). Isn’t this sort of like having the cliff-notes to a conversation? Or hyperlinked editions of James Joyce?

It seems that the primary purpose of most blogs is to act as a filter. This is most visible in terms of pop-culture, but applies just as readily to politics, news and current events. Megablogs like boingboing and metafilter act as gateways to the web, guiding the webuser around the unbelieveably vast quantity of information available on online, by presenting (what they deem to be) the most essential destinations. Links are accompanied by commentary (or at least some general context) often providing the “author’s” own personal view on the content in question.

Even the blog-my-life blogger’s perform the function of filter. They may not address world events, or prime time tv, but they present the world around them. The choice bits. Leaving the boring/embarrassing/tedious real-daily-life bits aside.

Can we apply this distinction to all blogs? Are blogs simply filters of various shades and sizes? Changing the tint and contrast, altering size and proportions. Or are they screens? Blocking various perspectives, revealing only outlines where there should be full-color three-dimensional objects on view. Are they ever mirrors?