Monday, April 5, 2010

On being a crackpot blogger

The other day I watched 2012. A rather awful film, but then I hate disaster movies. 2012 features a crazy blogger who predicts the end of the world. As it is a film, this lunatic is right.

There are plenty of crackpot bloggers out there. People who have some bee in their bonnet and start a blog to rant about it. With the internet these people can communicate to a potentially unlimited audience about the assasination of JF Kennedy, the Knights Templar and of course, the end of the world in 2012.

Guess what, I am one of those crackpot bloggers. Here I am writing to a readership of between 90-150 visitors a day on a subject of which I have no expertise. I warn you of the health risks of wearing shoes indoors and expect you to change your behaviour accordingly.

But then, unlike a lot of those crackpot bloggers, I have a professional job. I also have a PhD, which apparently means I am a proper scholar and an expert in my field (even if that has nothing to do with what I am writing about here). And if you met me, you would probably find I am a pretty regular sort of guy that you could enjoy a beer with.

And the really interesting thing is that although I may be a crackpot blogger, what I am talking about is what a good deal of people do anyway. You see, in a lot of countries, like Sweden and Bulgaria, they don't need some crazy person like me to tell them to take their shoes off at the door. They find it hard to believe that in some places people keep them on. And in the USA and Great Britain, lots of people have decided to keep their homes shoe-free without ever visiting this blog.

So maybe I am not such a ranting, lunatic crackpot.

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