Monday, September 05, 2005

What Gender is your Blog?

Let me begin with the Caveat “All generalizations are wrong”. Which is a paradox. Plural of paradox is paradise. Pair-o-dice is what takes gamblers to paradise. What a coincidence! When I was least expecting it.. But then if I were expecting it, it wouldn’t be a coincidence right? Another paradox. And coupled with the previous one, Paradise. Ahem.. before you get bored and run away, let me get back to the point.

In this post, I’m going to tell you how to differentiate between guy blogs and girl blogs. You see, many bloggers don’t make their profile public, or don’t mention their gender on their blogs. This post is a guide (mind you, merely a guide) to figure out from the blog whether the blog is written by a girl or by a guy.

The Guy blog
There is no one typical guy blog. But there are some signature traits which will point to the blog being a guy.
1. The blog will be replete with jokes (mostly thought up by the blogger himself and more often than not, good)
2. The blog will deal with ‘issues’ (and more often than not the issues will be commercial / business issues) and will express opinions on a vast range of subjects such as outsourcing, foreign policy and economic policies of the ruling government.
3. The posts will be deceptively self deprecating (read modest) carved out in a way that will urge the readers to compensate for the writer’s modesty
4. There will be allusions to his lack of sex life in different posts (though no particular post will be dedicated to this topic)

The Girl blog
The Girl blog is actually easier to recognize than the guy blog. Pointers:
1. Poetry. Especially poetry which does not rhyme. Also, poetry which will not make sense (or which will require intense study to understand) especially to guys.
2. Short posts (couple of sentences maybe) which are completely out of context and will not make any sense – especially to guys.
3. Copy paste of conversations (either in person or on phone or on the net) had with a close friend… The content of this conversation more often than not is the guy telling the girl that she’s mad. The girl will think this cute and post the conv on her blog.
4. Frequent ‘introspection’ posts, the content of which will be that the blogger is good for nothing and she has lost all confidence in herself and there is no hope for her. These posts attract a lot of comments especially from guys because they think that extending a cyber shoulder to a damsel in distress will win her over. Sometimes it actually works.
5. There will be some or the other post, when she is having trouble with her boyfriend which will be in a very indirect and roundabout manner making her problem a macrocosm of the world and the people in it.

These are nothing but modern day manifestations of the atavistic man. The male was the bread-winner, the hunter, who interacted / fought with the world to achieve his goals. He therefore had an ‘external’ point of view. Whatever he did was keeping in mind his interaction with the world at large. This results in him projecting a favourable picture of himself to the world either by sounding intelligent about issues or cracking jokes and making people laugh. Female bloggers also write issue based posts but the issues are more ‘social issues’ such as gay rights or eve teasing. Female bloggers will also write about incidents/events that happened to them or they witnessed but unlike the male blogger, who will externalize the incident (what the incident was about, what were the effects etc) the female bloggers it will internalize it (what the writer felt / what it meant to her). The male incidents will tend to be funny whereas the female version will be insightfully amusing. Both male and female bloggers will at some point attempt a short story on their blog which barring a few exceptions will be quite bad.

Each person is a bit of both. Yin and Yang. Therefore blogs will also be a combination of male and female characteristics. Some female bloggers might have male blogs and vice versa. It’s a question of proportion. 70% - 30% or 50% - 50% or anything else. And this is where the title of the post comes in. What gender is your blog? I’m also tagging the following –
Sita, Manu, AC - link this to your blog so that you can come to know what people think about the gender of your blog. You in turn tag three other people. My comments section is open and would be interesting to receive your feedback!!

Statutory warning: In some cases, reading this post could cause urges to lynch / castrate the writer of this post. The writer therefore says "Pehele se maafi mai-baap" and requests his readers to take this post with a pinch of salt, and pepper to taste.


Comments:
Eh? Gender of the blog? Ye topicaan kahaan kahaan se utha lere tum? Anyways the question of your castration does not arise at all... Cos you have nothing that can be castrated... ***Snort; ducks at the huge pitcher of beer coming my way*** He he

Anyways, we'll see what ppl think of the gender thing. Interesting. Very. I'll need a few more posts to sexually identify your blog. I will wait till then.
 
the poetry .... 1/2 post... conversation thing.... SO TRUE..... And the worst part is ... What do i comment on those posts.... considering that they are beyond my comprehension

Prateek
 
hehe. funny stuff.

Non-Sensei
 
hey love the points determing whether the blog is a guy or girl..but by this it only means that blog is of that gender right?i mean its not to determine the gender of the blogger.
 
AC - Man if u think i'm gonna waste a whole pitcher of beer by throwing it at you while you keep your mouth open, u r sadly mistaken! :)

Prateek - Here are a few suggestions: (1) Brilliant post! (2) I especially like the imagery (3) Heheheh... (4) Lol (5) Yeah i think you are mad too

Writetrack, Succubus, NS - Thankoo thankoo

Gayatri - Bang on!
 
Hmmm... Yeah, you're right. I'd rather have it slowly. Come this Sunday and we shall drink, my friend. For on Monday, we die... (Cos' of the hangover I promise myself)
 
This blog is so typically male, easily identified by the verbal diarrhea in the form of chauvinistic piggism.

&Arcane Crapper - You're seriously thirsty aren't you? Come to Purple Haze this saturday and statiate yourself, i say.
 
uh.can i be exempt from this if i'm sure i have the definitive male blog?
yes, lets all drink too!
 
@ARCANE - smsd Succubus but no response so far. Are you sure she'll be in town on sunday? I thought there was a change in plans. Anyways, sunday sounds good to me :). Bring your drinking cap :D
 
Shadow - hey thanks for all the praise! :)

AC - Yeah i'll drink to that!

Manu - Main bade dilwala hoon, ja maaf kiya!

Finch - I AM doing management, remember? And the answer to your question (Whydya make all blogs sound like superficial nonsense?) is in the post itself (This results in him projecting a favourable picture of himself to the world either by sounding intelligent about issues or cracking jokes and making people laugh.)
 
Wud the expert plz inspect my blog n certify it typically female?
 
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