EPT
The vast majority of blogs out there are what I'd call personal blogs. By personal blog, I mean that the author writes about his own thoughts and experiences. But a blog doesn't necessarily have to be personal in nature; in fact, some people have successfully written mostly impersonal blogs.
What is an impersonal blog? Well, if a personal blog is one where one's own thoughts and experiences are written, then an impersonal blog is simply one where such thoughts and anecdotes are avoided. Blogs that are technical in nature (ex: programming, finance, etc) most often fall under this category.
The impersonal blog, I feel, is a rare species. Not many people are (a) interested enough, and (b) confident enough to write about a subject for its own merits. In such articles, there is little margin for error: you're right or you're wrong. You've put yourself on the line to write about a topic that you feel qualified to write about in an objective, this is how it is, sort of way.
Mixing in some degree of persona into the blog is, while not necessarily inferior or superior to the alternative, a certainly much easier form to follow. The subject that most of us know the best, and are most likely experts in, is ourselves and our own thoughts. On top of that, it's rather hard (if not impossible) to write an indefensible treatise when there is so much that is up to interpretation and opinion. Not only are we pre-equipped with the knowledge needed, we aren't demanded of much rigor, and we have a built-in defense mechanism that protects us from much of the potential shame or embarrassment for being grotesquely wrong.
The drawback of the personal blog though, is that it exposes are persona to the world at large. For our personal thoughts and experiences to be even remotely interesting to the reader, it will usually have to be somewhat unusual and peculiar; the thought should be something that most people don't think about very often, and the experience should be rare. However, such thoughts and stories are potentially dangerous. A controversial or unusual thought can give the impression that we are weird, crazy, bigoted, or potentially any combination of negative connotations. The unusual and interesting anecdote might happen to be something that we should not have made public.
As you can see, there are potential repercussions to writing about our own lives. In fact, there may be more potential risk in writing a personal blog than an impersonal blog. After all, the most that can happen with an impersonal article is that we're proven wrong. On the other hand, a personal blog gone awry can put our judgement and character into question. The former is (usually) easily recoverable, while the latter is potentially fatal. Even the "A narrative of someone else, written from the perspective of the author", a form that I consider to be somewhere in between the personal and impersonal, has the potential to alienate the original protagonist from us.
Most of the blogging population writes personal blogs. The least we can do then is to think about how not only our regular readership will respond to an article, but how the whole spectrum of potential readers may respond to our musings. Take a step back and we will see that sometimes, there are things that we shouldn't write about in public.
Crossposted from my main blog
