What the hell's the point of these things anyway?

(Aside: that title makes me sound like I'm 90 and don't understand this newfangled gizmo that's just a TV with a typewriter in front of it and WHEN I WAS A YOUNGIN' WE LISTENED TO THE RADIO AND WE LIKED IT! DAMN WHIPPERSNAPPERS WITH YOUR WACKY WEED AND YOUR GROUP SEX!)

(Aside aside: "newfangled" sounds like it ought to be something to do with dentistry or vampires or sabretooth tigers.)

Finished the pages for my comic early this week and I'm on a crazy sleep schedule. The malaise of free time overtakes me, I begin to ponder...what makes a good blog?

Okay usually my ponderings are less mundane but this is a topic I'm thinking about a lot. Lots of people do blogs, pretty much everyone I guess. They provide a forum for people to express themselves and to shout their opinions at the Internet. And then there are some with actual news or content or something or other. I get this. More or less.

My thing is, is my Blog has consistently had a readership of <10 even when I was doing it A LOT. Some people might argue you shouldn't worry about readers but there's no point making something if there's no audience for it. Art is communication, and an artist without an audience is a guy talking to himself. I do that a lot, too.

And I can't imagine how similar blogs, people just rambling about the minutiae of their entirely unremarkable existences, could be doing much better. Possibly these people are just awash in friends and acquaintances or there's an untapped well of people interested in reading about stupid crap that these bloggers have found. Or maybe they're all in my boat, desperate for attention and deluding themselves into thinking blogging is the way to get it.

These days I'm doing my new webcomic, which has almost no audience but I'm so proud of it that I can convince myself that it will find one if I can just stick with it. The Blog, on the other hand, looks to me now like it must look to everyone else: pointless drivel. I started doing The Blog because I'd run out of ideas and energy to do webcomics, it's natural that The Blog would fall away when my comics came back. And for any stray thoughts I might want to broadcast, well now we have Twitter, don't we?

So what's the point of this business? A lot of people seem to write blogs about what remarkable people they are and their personal struggles, I can't imagine anything more trite and awful. Making a spectacle of your problems is just inviting "normal" people to stare at the freak. Doing it in an "inspirational" way just makes the normies think they're allowed to stare, and they think sympathizing with the freaks makes them better people. It doesn't. My mom wants me to write a book or something about my Asperger's Syndrome, she thinks we somehow should be cashing in on it because right now Autism is big business. To me that just seems crass, and disingenuous, which is something I'm not even capable of. (Facetious, sarcastic, yes; disingenuous, dishonest, no.)

But if I did do a blog about my EPIC STRUGGLE WITH HIGH-FUNCTIONING AUTISM it would be EXACTLY what this Blog already is. You want to know what my life is? I don't work, I have no friends, I don't go outside if I can help it, I only talk to my mom, my sister, and a few random internet people (and not very often on any of those), I watch too much TV and I'm guessing the cashiers at my grocery store must think I'm mute. The only difference would be I'd be putting a slightly different spin on things, also I guess I might delve more deeply into the things too embarrassing or depressing for this Blog. But I'm not an exhibitionist and I can't stand people sympathizing with me. I'm not cute, I'm not inspiring, I'm depressed and bitter and I don't do facial expressions well. And especially since I've stopped eating junk food, about the only thing that makes me feel good is being funny. WOKKA WOKKA WOKKA!

So what are these blog things all about? I'm seriously asking now: what do you, readers, look for in a blog? I honestly would like to know.