History, Documentary and Personal Blogging

There are several types of personal blogging and the most common is the documentary style. Blogs can serve just about any function but most blogs are simply outlines of the personal experiences of the blogger. There are some blogs that do things like collect poetry or use blogging as a venue for creative writing but most are of a documentary nature and say what’s going on in the lives of the blogger as it relates to the world at large.

Historically speaking, documentaries were intended to be very objective and to list the events encountered by the author of the writer or filmmaker. There has been an increased movement through blogging of making the documentary more subjective and putting one’s opinion into the words that are written. This means that in modern times, documentaries carry the voice of the writer in them and the whole thing is blurring the distinction between a documentary and say, a memoir. Blogs are somewhere between a memoir and a documentary because they have elements of each. For what it’s worth, memoirs, blogging and documentaries have become blurred in the internet world.

Not many bloggers consider themselves making formal documentaries, especially when they sit down and simply record the different events that happened to them in a given day. The things we normally take for granted about life, like our jobs, how we get to work each day, the technology we use—all are things that in the future will be fascinating for those who read them or for people who today live greatly different styles of living. It is this fascination for the different and new that makes blogs so interesting to many people. Documentary isn’t what people think of when they think of blogs but, in truth, they are documenting a microcosm of life in a small area of the world. Decades from now, these blogs will be the best way to see what life was like for the average person in today’s time. These blogs will become subjective entries into the great documentary of today.

The documentary may not be much what people think of when they are posting their feelings, thoughts and experiences onto the web. The documentary becomes a bit of a side effect of blogging our lives. We have no choice when we blog to include documentary items in the blog when we talk about our lives. Personal blogs, on the other hand, are more than just the ruminations of people wanting to talk about things in the absence of talking about their lives. Personal blogs are, in fact, ways to talk about your life in a documentary style and they are meant to have the public read them. Documentaries are appealing to those who are curious about how other people live and many who read blogs are interested exactly in what’s different about others lives from their own.