"We're Cultured!" Thursdays: Blogs and the curious environment they live in

Blogs are a weird sort of creature. Formed from any number of motives colliding with determination and the knowledge of "teh internets" and finally some small narcissistic vein that wants to see just how far the "experiment" will go- blogs have only their creators to blame. Blogs are so varied- they can either be personal blogs (like Angel's and my own), blogs with a purpose/genre like this one, blogs can provide commentary on any number of social issues, they can showcase art like photography or textual (poetry) and blogs can provide a platform for readers to interact with the bloggers and vice versa. The next step up is vlogging (video blogging) but only supremely geeky-awesome people like Brian do those. Where we fit in the ginormous blogosphere- God only knows.

Blogging started way before I was even aware that there was something called the internet (oh, those lost, dark days!) and someone called Justin Hall, right back in 1994 is recognised with started up one of the earliest blogs while he was a student. Kudos on him if he's still blogging. The word blog was coined in 1999 when someone as a joke, broke up the previously used weblog into "we blog". From 1999 onwards, blogs went right up in popularity- turning into huge beasts that were fed by online popularity. I can't write about blogs as an Asian and not mention Xiaxue- a Singaporean blogger who (beyond my thought processes entirely, sorry) has become huge in blogosphere and subsequently, the majority of Singaporean social strata. There's also- Kenny Sia, also relatively famous in Asian blogger circles. Personally, I don't like reading stranger's blogs, I prefer to stick to people I've had contact with in real life or at least know. There is an element of voyeurism that's contained in blogs but whether or not that's an ethical matter of "well, they're posting it", that's for another day. Preferably over drinks.

So why did we start this blog?

Angel and I were reading artofmanliness.com from a recommendation and we were going "awwww!" over the post on "How to write a love letter like a dying soldier" when one of us (don't remember who) said via MSN, "Hey, is there a female version of this site?" and the other replied with "wouldn't that be awesome" and from there the ideas flew thick and fast. We don't want this site to become massive but we're aiming for some structure and a small audience who (hopefully) can gain or contribute to this experiment haha. From our viewpoints as single, Christian women who have had some experience in leading small groups of youth and young adults- we've seen our fair share of girls struggle with issues that don't seem to have been exposed or commonly discussed in their social circles (how many times do we need to hear about "waiting to find the perfect man for you" or "how to live life as Godly women" without ever actually going into the nitty-gritty of it all?)

So here we are. Hopefully you're still reading =)