A characteristic I’ve noticed of many blog articles is that they are not structured in the traditional Western essay format: they don’t state a thesis at the beginning.* Often, they are explorations on a theme, or build an argument as they go, only reaching a conclusion at the end.**

Source: Understanding blogs – Tracy Durnell’s Mind Garden

And if you zoom out from the individual blog post level, in a sense this also describes what blogs are: a contemplation on a particular theme in depth (even if that theme is “the author’s life” or “stuff I like”). A blog is a body of work. Blogs are composed of many posts, which stand individually and can be read in any order, and which collectively form a blog that tells a story from all of its individual posts. Unlike a book, blogs grow and shift for as long as they are online, each added post changing the blog incrementally.

Source: Understanding blogs – Tracy Durnell’s Mind Garden

fLamed fury’s latest list of posts linked me to this excellent post exploring blogging. Now, clearly the author and I started blogging around the same time - early aughts. The whole post is worth a read.

Yet, these two paragraphs capture the essence of a blog. They are an exploration of a theme. As a result, very few blogs that I consider worth reading push a thesis from the beginning. They arrive at one. Sometimes in an entirely different post. Sometimes, the author changes their mind and links back. Or flip flops across time spans.

Blogs help me get to know the person and their thinking, often more than the thesis. I guess it’s reality TV for the people that like to read.