Tagged: Five Reasons Why I Blog

I was tagged by Gaff, damn him! Five reasons why I blog? 

1. I was writing already:  I have a history of polluting guild forums with my own opinions, tales, and misadventures.  One of the reasons I jumped to blogging was that these forums seem to spontaneously combust with alarming regularity taking my wit and wisdom with them.  Here at least I can back up the database myself.
2. The persistence of memory or the lack thereof:  Part of the reason I was posting to guild forums was as sort of a written memory.  The older I get, the more I forget it seems.  This way, when I am really old, and somebody comes by to give me a “told you so” on what sort of memories I would have left over from all of this gaming, I can smugly tell them about how we took down Archaedas in Uldaman by the skin of our teeth on the fourth try and how the whole server cheered and we received a parade in our honor through Stormwind. (I plan to exaggerate the hell out of everything in my old age.)
3. The appearance of mattering:  By howling in the wires of the internet my so-called opinions occasionally attract the attention of somebody who matters more to the MMO gaming community than I do. (Which turns out to be an astoundingly long list of individuals.  I am well below even Timmy at SOE, which is a slap in the face to third rate bloggers everywhere!)  This person’s stature in the community reflects momentarily on me when they acknowledge my existence.  It is like momentary immortality! Go me!
4. I get to educate:  How many gamers now know who Peter Roget, Gertrude Stein, and Grigori Alexandrovich Potemkin-Tavricheski are thanks to my insistence on using obscure references and then linking them to Wikipedia?  By my count, three.  Anyway, my outside references give me a chuckle.
5. Feeling of superiority: I do not have to go surf through many random blogs before I start feeling like the paragon of consistent literacy.  Really, try it some time.  I think much of the web is out there to make you feel better about yourself.  It is like your mind is giving you some subtle proof that your solipsistic thoughts might have validity. (Add solipism to that education list!  Thanks Ryan North!)
6. My own boss:  I don’t have to follow rules. (See, now I have 6 reasons! What are you going to do about it?) I can blather about what I like, take humorous things seriously, serious things humorously, and generally carry on as I please. 
7. Despite myself:  Even after all of the above, I still have some regular readers who comment, say nice things, and generally make the effort more than worthwhile.  Can’t you see that this just prolongs the life of this blog?  Comments and attention are like crack to a blogger.

So there you have it, all seven of my five reasons why I blog. 

Since I know, deep in my soul, that the only thing WORSE than being tagged for one of these lame blog memes is not to be tagged when many of your peers do get tagged, I am going to spread the love and tag some people.  You can complain about it in public, but thank me in private.

So I am tagging:

Melmoth’s Inferno:  Because I love a good literary reference.  I’ll let you know as soon as he has one.

Kilanna at Dwarven Runes:  Because even the thought of Kilanna not commenting on my blog leaves me curled up on the floor with the DTs and because she has a shiny new blog on which I got to leave the first comment. (I see codependency in our future.)

MMO Critic: Because real life has let him return to MMO blogging

Zubon at Kill Ten Rats: Why should Ethic have all the fun?

Kinless at Kinless’ Chronicles: Because he links me despite the fact I haven’t talked about WoW much lately and he appears to be the kind that actually responds to these things.  I mean, Gitr got him to do one of these just a couple weeks back. Now he can pass this back to Gitr.