Why I’m Never Starting a Blog (Oh, Wait)

The amount of times I’ve told myself not to start a blog, I’ve become a parody of myself. I’ve told myself that white girls with blogs are the same as white guys with podcasts, a crime as atrocious and “basic” as my Jane Eyre laptop case. There’s a good point to be had about the inherent cutesy white supremacy of this over saturation of white voices, just like there is about every first year white feminist’s appreciation for Bronte. But somewhere along the line, it’s become resistance for resistance sake — apparently the final thread of my teenage hipsterness. I grew up just young enough for blogs to be both prevalent and cringe, cool and out of fashion.

I don’t read many blogs, and I’m sorry about that. I can’t shake the feeling that they’re Linkedin for arts students at best, and livestreamed masturbation at their worst. It’s a little ridiculous. I will watch vloggers and game streamers and listen to podcasts; I adore diary comics and Snapchat stories, and my own Twitter is a stream of consciousness to make Charlotte Perkins Gilman proud. Responsible openness is something that I advocate for fiercely as a depressed, chronically ill lesbian and former shy kid. I tweet about therapy. I tweet about my ME. I tweet about periods and failure and which latest TV muscle-man I think is a himbo. I’m insecure about it, and I pity my followers, but I still do it without losing much sleep. 

I’m realising now what it is about blogs that scares me. Why I sit and watch my friends’ creative endeavors and feel as queasy as I do proud — apart from the chronic fatigue, obviously.  What’s wrong with blogs?

There’s been a lot of talk about educational inequality lately. If you are one of those unlucky enough to have been duped into following me online or, even worse, face to face friendship, you’ve probably heard me scream my head off about it. And I’m an English student. I am earning myself a nice juicy debt in order to be taught the study of cause and effect, linguistic meaning and social order as expressed through the media — and to read the sexy bits of Paradise Lost. So when I question my relationship to blogs, I think: “what makes them different?” And the truth is, blogs are accessible and can be posted for free. 

A memory I haven’t discussed before is when I read my first “classic” novel, outside of the curriculum. It was, of course, Jane Eyre. After a lesson I gathered the courage to ask my English teacher for help, because I had a problem: I wanted to do an English degree. I was seventeen. And I’d not read anything any more conventionally intellectual than Of Mice and Men. My teacher really liked me — in part because I was a white girl with supportive parents, in part because I nearly always got full marks, and in part because we recommended spy dramas to each other. She led me into the cupboard where they stored books no longer on the curriculum and handed me a copy of Jane Eyre, The Handmaid’s Tale, and Wide Sargasso Sea. I’ll be honest. She had my number. 

I promise this has a point. You see, this is just one example of many students from working class schools and families being culturally disadvantaged in university applications. I had a similarly strange, confusing meeting with my former history teacher when I mentioned applying to Oxford (which I did not, in the end); I was passed from teacher to teacher looking for someone who knew literally anything about the process. 

My English teacher asked me what else I had on my personal statement. I was ready for this question, because I had a trick up my sleeve — my family’s one connection to upper-class academia, the media and the arts. My parents are from Stratford-Upon-Avon, and from there I was able to latch on a little to the local student magazine, writing about careers advice. Two hundred words on careers in eye health might not be impressive for an Eton student, but in my agricultural town it was. This, I was proud of. I, however ignorantly, felt smug. Everyone else trying to study English, off the back of grades and corner shop jobs, had been told to flesh out their applications: they’d been told to start a blog. 

None of my friends started blogs. We hadn’t become little Marxists yet (most of us are now), but we were indignant enough not to take a consolation prize. I should add that all my friends but me got into their dream universities that year, and they are all beacons of creativity and intelligence. At the time, none of us appreciated blogs for what they were — or maybe we did, but didn’t trust the likelihood of a miserable looking Wordpress account improving your chances of social mobility.

But now, at twenty one, I have to face the music. I am going to sing the praises of the humble blog. 

Primarily, blogs are a platform for your own writing largely free of state or corporate control and financial dependency. In so far as internet connections, tech savviness, and literacy is accessible, blogs are accessible. Which of course means they are defined as crass and easy and low brow. Privileged university applicants — or, now, graduates — can fill their CVs with self made films, published writing, and highly regarded volunteer work in the arts. University societies (and we all know the rumours of the Exeter drama societies) are often also inaccessible. Cliquey cultures, entrance fees, and time commitments leave minority and working class students high and dry. 

But I have a laptop. I have an internet connection. And blog entries take much less time to write than films do to make. Wordpress offers cheap (ish) hosting, but with one Gmail account Blogger’s good to go. 

But the final stumbling block for me is that blogs differ from Twitter or Facebook or Instagram in that they’re just you, and you alone. It’s a stage. Posting a link to your Wordpress or Blogspot is asking others to engross themselves in your thoughts, your words, your world. If you write factually — e.g. David Farrier’s bizarre but brilliant webworm.com — it’s still citing yourself as truth. You begin to worry. Why would anyone want to read what I have to say? Confidence has a class ceiling too. The sole experience of living on planet Earth will have you well versed in the overwhelming and largely undeserving ego of cishet, upper class, able bodied white men. Consequently, listing all of the systemic causes of low self esteem in women and minorities would turn this blog post into a sociology textbook. Actually, it already did. I just deleted a whole paragraph. You’re welcome.

The truth is, like I said earlier, I am a depressed, chronically ill lesbian and former shy kid. My former state school is in the bottom 100 schools in the UK, which I like to tell rich kids with pride because I am a delight. There will always be a little voice telling me that I’m not cultured enough, smart enough; too stroppy and rambling and attention seeking.  Seminars are a hoot. And I can inspect all the reasons why I’ve never done this before. I can ask myself “who the fuck even writes blogs anymore?” over and over. Who even reads them? What are their value? Am I a bad socialist for asking that? Ignore them. In the end, here are the three truths: my voice matters, my voice can help others, and I love my voice. I forget them often. But I’m going to get better.