The Rhetoric of Blogging (Part IV): Coffee Rhetoric Rhetoric

A quick review of rhetoric appeals: ethical, logical, emotional. There seems to be no doubt that our friend T.'s blog is has a primarily emotional appeal. Let's look at the tag line: The ravings and digital photo diary of a moody, chronically single, and impatient young woman. The description of the author are emotion based words, like moody, chronically, and impatient. She's painting a picture of herself that seems to disclaim any responsiblity, like an anti-ethos. "Okay, this is who I am, so don't expect me to be sensible," is what I read from this.

When I first started reading this blog, I would have thought that's all it was. There's a lot of "I got drunk, I'm hung over," "I got hit on by a loser, now I'm going to get drunk" type of writing. Granted, it's well-written and often funny, but why write this stuff? I'm not denigrating the content or the format, I'm asking seriously, why?

I asked T. and here's what she said: As far as why I started the blog... simply put, I wanted to be writing on a semi-consistent basis. I had
hit a pretty rough writing patch where I wasn't able
to produce anything. I felt as if my creative juices
had dried up. Blogging allows me to keep up the momentum in terms of
writing.

So it started as a place to put her stuff. However, she could have just written all this in a diary. Somehow, however, knowing that there were potential readers out there kept pressure on her to produce. I think she enjoys the audience. Don't all of us would-be writers ultimately hope to appeal to somebody? I think T. likes putting her life on the internet to draw us in. She writes with a strongly emotionally appealing style. Consder the following from an October post:

"I've said in previous posts that with maturity comes a sense of clarity. With clarity comes relief. This sense of relief comes from not having to impress (or pacify) anybody for any reason of frivolity.
I feel comfortable in my own skin and with the decisions I choose to make, in maintaining my sanity. This includes surrounding myself with significant other people."

This is a young woman trying to come to grips with herself, and writing about it. She also tries to makes sense of the crazy events in her life. She is also very amusing. Finally, there are times, especially with some of her pictures, that I think she is posing, creating a very coy image. (There's one that unintentionally looks like a bondage thing that's a bit disturbing). Perhaps her primarily goal is to create an emotional connection with herself, as she says. But even though T. says that she doesn't write for her readers, I don't think this is true:

"I don't blog to appease the reading masses. I do it to appease myself. It's
cathartic and it allows me to do what I enjoy most...write.

People are definitely welcome to post comments and
offer their feedback on my blogs, but comments don't
have any direct effect on my writing style and what I
decide to blog about."

I think this CAN'T be true, for anybody. First of all, once we read comments, we internalize them in some way. I guess the most hardened of us could say, "I don't give a damn about what anyone says or thinks about me," and mean it. As Bora commented, it's human nature to gravitate towards like thinkers. If T. posts a hilarious piece on, oh, getting hit on while on the bus, and lots of people comment and say that is so funny, write more, we're going to tend to write more. Conversely, if commenters says, "That was offensive, you suck," we are as writers probably going to withhold that part of our writing -- perhaps because our feelings are hurt, but also perhaps because we feel our readers don't deserve to see that part of us, they don't deserve to know our thoughts if they don't appreciate them. Or perhaps we grit our teeth and say, "to hell with them," and keep pecking away at the keyboard, but we'll still affected -- and how can that not manifest itself somewhere in our writing?

Finally, although T.'s blog has strong emotional appeal, there is also an element of logic and authority in places. For example, in her post about the movie Rize, she tells us she's a film buff (authority), and then gives a convincing description of why it's a great movie (logic). So once again, we see a melding of rhetorical appeals, even in a primarily pathos-type website.

One small aside: I told T. that I thought her name might be a pseudonym in case we were a bunch of web-crazed maniacs (thereby, I'm sure, convincing her that we ARE), but she assured me no, that's her name, but her dates always ask, "So what's REALLY on your birth certificate?"