Taking A Look At Blogger Gen-3

In the blogosphere, there are three "generations" of bloggers. The first are the Founders, the ones who started it all. These are the guys and gals who laid the foundations of blogging, started companies like Blogger and Six Apart, and established the technology that we all use today. Bloggers like Neil Gaiman, Xeni Jardin, Cory Doctrow and Wil Wheaton fall into this generation.

The second generation of bloggers are the Extroverts, the generation I fall into. We're the ones who initially discovered blogging thanks to the founders, and have used it to express our diverse, sometimes wild, and always opinionated views on the world around us. Our blogs are our soap box, and even if we fail, we're going to use them to try and exact societal change, no matter how little an effect we have on our peers.

And then, there's Gen-3, the subject of today's little rant. Gen-3 are the general public, mostly high school kids, who blog because they merely think it's "cool," and sometimes, they have a valid opinion on important issues. But, for the most part, they use it to talk about their school days, how much they like/hate this or that person, and to post stupid graphics (especially those gay little Bratz-looking avatars the kids love to use). My time on Blog$hares has afforded me a window into the world of Gen-3, with links to their sites. And now, I present to you, reviews of a few piss-poor Gen-3 blogs, and why they suck.

Steph's Lil' Secret Diary - Not much of a secret if it's on the Net, is it, Stephy? If you're going to keep a 'secret' diary, go get one of those GirlTek Password Journals or something, jeez! Upon first viewing the page, you can tell you're in for a choppy ride. There's a starfield background that showcases right to left motion, which can give you motion sickness if you're so inclined. I'm not, so it's just something distracting and takes away from the true purpose of the blog. Which, by the way, isn't even the main page! All it is is a pic of some stupid Adidas ad, the starfield, and a pink-bordered box with exactly seven words, four of which make absolutely no sense to anyone with an IQ over 80. Clicking the Rants link, you finally find her posts, and good lord, are they a mess. Overuse of color is a big turn-off, and get the spelling and grammar:

yeapz..may al my lovely frens stay hapi n healthy..
esp dear Yanti....

may me n darlin's love be evealasting...
i love him! muackz!*

Said what? Come on! If you're going to blog, at least use proper English, for Pete's sake! It's a whole bunch easier to understand someone when you don't use AOL Kiddie Speak. I don't care if you are from a foreign country. If you're going to use English (like this guy), use English, not Engrish or the aforementioned Kiddie Script. No trophy for you.

My Escape To Freedom - News flash, honey. Getting out of High School isn't the Escape you're looking for. Trust me on this one. When you get to be my age (28), you'll WISH you were back in the carefree days of High School, I promise. While I hated high school as much as you do, it still beats the tar out of real life hands down. Now, on to the meat of the review. This chick has a HUGE header graphic that took a relatively long time to load up, and I'm on Cable over here! On the Web, smaller is better in terms of filesize. If any of your readers are on dialup, they're going to have a bit of a wait to read your drivel thanks to that asinine graphic. Yeah, it's neat looking, but damn, woman, shrink the filesize! Image Compression Algorhythms are your friends. And now, for the text byte:

love my prezzies.. :D and I got a necklace from Tiffany from my aunt... lol i was like 0.O omg omg haha.. ok that was smth realli nice to rmbr...
been ultra ultra bz this past few weeks.. moving stuff and everything.. i haven't even had time to watch t.v!!! T.T
went to the new campus and bought my books... you know you get the floor plan all nicely memorized but when you get there it's like you're walking around blind.. haha

Well, for the most part, the English use here is sound, but it still has Kiddie Script moments. Are you kids really, truely that lazy? Is it too much of an effort to type three letters, like "Are" or "Our," that you have to shorten it to "r?" You're not saving much time at all, unless you're the hunt-and-peck keyboard type. Here Comes The Schooling: It's "presents," not "prezzies." Sentences begin with Capital Letters. It's "busy," not "bz." You only need one "OMG" to get your point across. There are no dots in "TV," it's an acronym, not an initial. And you might want to discover the line break tag (
or
), as it can make paragraphs easier to read. No trophy for you, either...

Jen's Lovely Little Space - Oh. Dear. Lord. This chick is 30? You'd swear by her blog that she was 13! Now, I'm not familiar with MSN Spaces, since I think Microsoft is the ultimate Digital Evil, but damn! You think she'd organize her space a little better. Most MSN people keep their photo albums off to the side, but this chick has them front and center, and you've got to scroll down a bit to get to any blog content whatsoever. Kinda defeats the purpose of having a blog to begin with. But I digress, as there are such things as strictly photo blogs (I have two of them, but they tie in to my sites, and don't take up more than a few hundred square pixel area in my sidebars). No text byte this time, since all of her text is peppered with gay little images and what not, which totally throw the paragraph formatting all out of whack. At least her spelling and grammar are consistent. No trophy for you until you learn how to organize. And there's nothing wrong with being 30. It's 50+ you gotta worry about. That's when you really get old. This blog stands as proof that there are people over 18 in Gen-3, and their lack of computer or design knowledge makes them no better than the kiddies they're sharing a blog generation with...

:+:s o . n e a r . y e t . s o . f a r:+: - OK. Seriously. This whole stylized title thing? Played out. Yeah, I did it with The Ranch, but it wasn't overkill like that. Here we have yet another typical Gen-3 blog, as is evident from the text byte:

hmmmm...this 2 days sux til the max!!SIGH..
well,smth really bad happened..and thx 2 myself!! i made this happened..arghh..
no matter what,thx nic..> u calm me down n b there when i really need sum1 2 talk =) u're a great friend!!
then,acc me msg til i fall asleep.muahah..

Ugh. Again, if you're going to use English, use it right. No trophyt for you.

As you can probably tell, viewing these blogs long enough to review them here is a painful process. Sure, I might be a Grammar Nazi, but hey. If you're going to communicate, and you want to be percieved as a rational thinking, intelligent human being, then please, blog like one. Not like some damned 12 year old...