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.
I am not a 
