Oleg's Big Party

So what is the point of a blog? What should it be used for? Do blogs even have purposes? People write blogs that reveal all, perhaps as a form of emotional catharsis. I had LJ once for that, but because I never wanted people to read what I wrote, I never told anyone what my LJ account was. It’s gone now, so don’t bother looking. A diary is much more suitable for personal events and thoughts; who would want a stranger reading about your life online? A bout of emotional irrationality brought on that bit of online blog-writing in my case. After it cleared up, I let the blog die off to be overwritten by other’s stories on the LJ servers.

Blog is a mutation of “weblog”, which would give an individual a better idea of where it originated from. Blogs should be a ranting ground for an individual’s opinions - an online High Park. With the advent of blogs, anyone with a basic knowledge of webpage creation could become a pundit. You don’t need fancy software to set up a blog - a dedicated user with a free Geocities account willing to update the page every day becomes your modern cyberpundit.

So what is Oleg’s Big Party? It now features, in addition to the original blog written by the great Oleg himself, a forum for Oleg’s loyal readers to discuss whatever is brought up in the blog, or whatever comes up in the readers’ minds. But Oleg’s blog is a curiosity. It is not exactly a ranting ground for Oleg to share, or rather, expound, his views on the daily news. It is definitely not a day-to-day diary of his exploits either. Besides, some of it is quite imaginative and reads like fiction. Oleg’s Big Party tells stories - but those stories fall into the category of History as opposed to daily life stories. Oleg’s blog is quite an oddity in this respect - it’s not a diary or a ranting ground. And that he has given privileges to others to write for the blog leads us into the next topic - wikis.