Oh goody. An anonymous meme. I don't hate these things with a passion at all.
- Grab the nearest book.
- Open the book to page 23.
- Find the fifth sentence.
- Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
Who writes these things?
Okay. Firstly, the general term is weblog or blog, not journal, you sheltered, net-illiterate arse. (While I'm on the subject, it's also not called a blogger... that's just thoroughly wrong.)
And maybe someone can enlighten me about the exact value of this exercise, which -- to my uneducated eye -- appears to be somewhere around zero. If you're inclined to believe that the book closest to a person at any time is an interesting insight into that person rather than a product of chance, then fair enough, that's a premise I might be able to get behind. But if that's the case, just get people to give the name of the sodding book. Picking the fifth sentence on page 23 will, far more often than not, produce something completely uninteresting. Observe:
Parliament, for example, was in the last decades of the eighteenth century passing Enclosure Acts at the rate of one a week.
Yikes! Robbed of its context it's such a profoundly boring sentence that it practically forces me to provide a citation to its source just so people won't think poorly of my reading habits.
Unless the specific objective of the meme is to generate large quantities of noise in an already low-signal environment, why not at least let the participant choose an interesting sentence? Chances are they're going to go through books until they find one they like anyway.
I think people just make these things up to give other people something to post on their blogs when they've run out of cat stories. I can see why they appeal to bloggers -- they're ready-made blocks of cut-and-paste content with which they can make their blog appear active while simultaneously producing nothing original and expending almost no effort. I just can't see how they appeal to readers. Unless the readers are also bloggers, who vector the meme further... a cycle of mediocrity.
Postscript: In the process of writing this bitter denunciation I've managed to do exactly what the meme asked. clc: 0, meme: 1.
Regarding the choice of term, I disagree that blog or weblog is the only appropriate term. For instance, I would say that Alex (http://www.x3ja.co.uk) writes a journal, because he talks about stuff he does, whereas I mostly write a blog, because I talk about stuff I've seen on the web. Or something like that. As this comes into neither category, I don't really know which term is less wrong.
I have to admit, though, I'm completely guilty on the "effort-free content" thing.
All journals are blogs, but not all blogs are journals.
After discussing this with jimbo on IRC for a bit I've come to the conclusion that this terminology is still largely a matter of personal preference. However, those who disagree with me are still wrong.
I think it's a great idea...
"..."
Oh. The nearest book to me only has 12 pages.
The second nearest book has more though:
"The bleeding can be reduced with the use of applying pressure to the wound or cauterising it with a hot sheet of aluminium or cigar."
£5 to anyone who can "name that book in 1" (sentence).
you are an idiot