Intellectual people talk about short films, unsung directors, unmelodic classical music, philosophers, absurd novels, and themselves. Themselves, and their phony involvement in this “for- intellectuals-only” subjects.

The ubiquity of phony writers on the Web

A lot of people think that writing about these highly-classified subject matters would make them appear as real erudite and intellectual bloggers on the Web. Actually, these would. But it takes real knowledge to convince your readers that you’re really an expert with this stuff. And in this case, real knowledge means experience, participation, and unadulterated passion.

However, despite the technicality and real knowledge involved in blogging about these themes, there are still bloggers who pretentiously use the medium to gain fame and money on the Web. They are the faux writers pretending like a connoisseur as if they are the real expert of a certain field. Surprisingly, these writers manage to gain huge followings, huge followings comprise of poseurs and fakers as well.

Ubiquitous is the exact head count of phony writers on the Web today. Sadly, everyone can be an expert SEO practitioner and blogger, a critically acclaimed movie and music reviewer, a marketing master and so on these days. And unquestionably, this occurrence, this chaotic blogging condition is alarming. Especially to the readers, kids and students who rely heavily on the Web for academic purposes.

Early blogging

When blogging emerged in the early 90’s, especially during the latter part of 1994 to the early years of 1995, it was just a mere form of online diary writing pioneered by writers and journalists who called themselves escribitionists and online diarists. Yet despite the clandestine nature of these online diaries (since the Internet’s was not yet that popular at that time), they still manage to gain decent amount of readers. Yet everything changed when blogging became extremely popular in the final years of the 90’s when ubiquitous free blogging platforms sprang up on the Web.

Blogging became open and accessible to the public, gave every Internet user an opportunity to be an online writer and blogger, and changed its once personal atmosphere. Different blogging forms surfaced, until business blogging became a trend.

When everybody is trying to be intellectual

Business blogging not just transformed the entire atmosphere of blogging, but it transformed many online writers’ mindset as well. A lot of talented writers today just choose to write for money instead of writing for themselves or for what interest them.

The worst things is, everyone is trying to be intellectual by writing topics out of their niche and expertise, just to gain money and have a portion of business blogging success.

This brief history shows and reminds us that the real essence of blogging is writing about ourselves or about things that deeply interest us. Whether it be regular online writing or business blogging, we should always write like those online diarists who pioneered writing on the Web. We should write with honesty, about things we deeply know. There is nothing wrong with business blogging or monetizing your blog as long as you are writing about the things you really love. Because writing out of your niche and expertise harms not just the entire World Wide Web, but the readers who trust it as well.