Friday, May 09, 2008

Blog Psychology (updated)

After nearly three years of blogging, I offer an idiosyncratic, unscientific, but possibly realistic account of the different types of personalities engaged in posting on the blogsophere. People may fit more than one category or move back and forth between them. I name no names.

1. Emotivists: Those who cheer or jeer or thank you, but do little else.

2. One trick ponies: Those who post the same chops repeatedly, hoping that repetition makes for argument (or something).

3. Thinkers: Those who engage posts thoughtfully with a desire for knowledge.

4. Stinkers: Those who take on false names, offer gratuitous insults--my favorite, "You have a mail order degree"--and, when banned, do the same thing on another blog that I like.

5. Butterflies: Those who flit about, landing briefly, writing little beyond impressions.

6. Diverters: "those who intentionally steer the blog postings into areas never intended by the original blogpost." (Thanks to Doug White, who warn me to got be diverted by such.)

7. Lurkers: Those who read, but do not post. They sometimes email me instead.

5 comments:

Doug White said...

You forgot the diverters (a.k.a. blog-hi-jacker): those who intentionally steer the blog postings into areas never intended by the original blogpost.

havoc said...

I'm mostly a lurker, but I emote from time to time. In light of your writing and the insightful words that Sarah leaves from time to time, I'm just plain intimidated. There are a lot of people that think I'm "smart," but my kind oflginxj smart doesn't even register on the scale that you and Sarah live on.

You feed me my mind. I appreciate it, but I'll rarely post to keep from showing others the fool that I am.

Paul D. Adams said...

Ha! An intriguing taxonomy, Dr. G! As I read each category, I find myself falling into each. Notwithstanding item 3, I'm somewhat ashamed. Of course, that is a good thing I suppose if it yields more careful entries. After all, words are tools of thought and thoughts are reflections of our heart (as someOne once said).

Yokota Fritz said...

Thank you for this insightful post. Gotta go flit away now!

;-)

Jim Pemberton said...

I concur. A resonant comment from the occasional odd number.