I am not a blogger. Bloggers, by definition (and necessity), blog. They blog in the morning, they blog in the evening, they blog at suppertime. I don't blog. I tried to blog once, but I failed. I failed miserably.

Bloggers don't appreciate press from ignorant, neophyte blog failures like myself, because blog failures like myself are prone to sweeping philosophical generalizations concerning the nature of blogging. We exclusively link to only the most popular blogs featured in vogue publications and attempt to sum up a vast cultural/social/technological phenomenon with a week's worth of research and a penchant for amateurish, ad hoc "blog-speak" (ex: blog-wagon, blogzilla, blogsploitation, blog-speak).

Sweeping generalization number one

Only if I had the masochistic urge to receive 60,000 acid emails from disgruntled, sharp-tongued (fingered) bloggers would I have the gall to conclude from my brief blogging experience that to blog is to engage in the pursuit of what one extremely popular blogger calls PIPA: Personally Identified Public Anonymity.

Lance Arthur, proprietor of said extremely popular blog (why drop names when you can link?), describes PIPA as "the ability to announce your feelings, emotions, opinions, and far-out unreasoned theories to an unknowing public as yourself, but you are, in fact, no one."

As a blogger, you are not entirely anonymous, because it is your blog with your name and your email address on it. Not to mention you are, well, you.

However, posting a highly opinionated blog is not the same as standing on a street corner and slinging insults at passers-by. For starters, there's much less punching. There is an implied safety to blogging -- and the Web as a whole -- similar to taunting a gorilla through a chain-link fence. Sure, the gorilla would tear your arms off like warm taffy if he could reach you, but he can't. You have PIPA. All the gorilla can do is send you slobbering, chest-pounding emails via his AOL free trial account.

Of course, not all bloggers are pissed-off, screaming lunatics looking for a safe way to rant. (Some bloggers are quite the opposite.) PIPA doesn't function exclusively as a protective wall; it can also be a powerful amplifier of otherwise small voices. Through simple, free blog creation software such as Blogger, Pitas, Squishdot, and Manila, the previously faceless webhead with a homepage -- fueled by PIPA -- now has the ability to become a blog celebrity.

The Famous and the Followers

Noah Grey, blogger-in-residence at NoahGrey.com, is an agoraphobic, manic-depressive living at home who hasn't had a face-to-face friend in more than four years. Obviously, he is not the prototypical blogger, but he is a good example of how an otherwise reclusive character can garner blog fame.

People read Noah's daily posts and send him comments. Readers are drawn to Noah's blog because they are drawn to Noah, or at least the version of Noah cloaked and magnified by PIPA. His posted insights are rich, and his blog design is richer. Noah has even created his own, free blogging software called Greymatter. Noah's PIPA fame, it would seem, is well deserved.

PIPA is tricky, though, because it gives every blogger the impression that simply by posting their opinions on intellectual curiosities or anything else they can become equally as famous as the Noah Greys, Jason Kottkes, and Jack Saturns of this world. This is simply not the case. At last estimate, there were more than 60,000 blogs competing for the attention of an audience wholly incapable of even minor loyalties.

Still, the average blogger, more than likely a self-absorbed college student with ample free time, speaks to his audience as if they are stuck to his blog all day long like glue on velcro, eagerly awaiting his next post like a drop of Evian in the Sahara. Phrases such as "as you all know" and "you remember ____ " get tossed around liberally from people we don't know and certainly don't remember. In fact, I'm suspicious that the blogger himself is the only one who really knows and remembers, and is therefore the only one who really cares. Then again, I am not a blogger.

Surfing the ultimate wave

The end result of this odd compilation of self-contained celebrities is a Web community that I find both alienating and intriguing. As someone admittedly outside of loop, I browse through blogdom as dazed and confused as an octogenarian watching Total Request Live without the calming blandness of Carson Daly for moral support. Spend a few hours in this world and some uncomfortable truths begin to float to the surface. "These people are hip, you're not. These people are 'plugged in,' you're not." Suddenly, you want to figure out when and how you fell so desperately behind the cool curve, so you click and click and click. Now they own you.

Blogs encourage surfing in its purest form. Well-stocked and updated blogs are swelled with links, and many of the links are to other blogs about some guy, which in turn link to other blogs about some girl, and other blogs about some other dude, ad infinitum. What the blog community sometimes lacks in well-conceived content it more than makes up in sheer depth. Try as you may, you will never dig to the bottom of the blog pile. There's always another link, and always another geeky, hipster blog to suck you in to a life equally uninteresting as your own, and therefore -- in that voyeuristic Web way -- incredibly interesting.