I’ve been thinking about this over the past few days and, no, it’s not because I’m a goth deep inside.

I think it’s because of two reasons: one, the article/essay-style approach where I’m basically pretending to write for some magazine or newspaper and, two, because I honestly think that if it weren’t for FriendFeed and my exposure to social media in general, I wouldn’t write about this stuff anyway. So, it’s form and subject.

There’s a certain kind of formality present in these sorts of blogs where, to be taken seriously, you need to present yourself and your subject matter seriously. And, for a long time there, I quaintly thought about working to become the next voice in social media and technology blogs. But, oh, man, how boring is all of that. Yeah, I enjoy it. I’m an early adopter. I’m a tech enthusiast. But so are the next ten thousand people with blogs and they’re all writing the same thing. Sure, I can add some funny to it. I can pretend to be the Larry David of tech blogging or emulate Hunter S. Thompson and just go sideways with it. But, honestly, I’d be dressing up a corpse. I’d be trying to convince myself—and everyone else—that this is something that I actually want to do. I have no problem with actually writing; I’m naturally verbose. I have no problem rambling off six or seven paragraphs in a short period of time. Once I find that ‘hook’ that I can reel my thoughts in on, it usually comes together with a minimal amount of fuss. In fact, most everything posted here was written spontaneously and, with a few minor edits here and there, is essentially first draft material. This isn’t bragging; this is me counting my blessings that I don’t have to labor over it. If I had to labor over it, well… let’s just say I probably wouldn’t. I like to write but I don’t want to write about Apple and FriendFeed and whatever unless I absolutely have something real to write about rather than just more navel-gazing and theorizing.

If you use the word ‘should’ a lot, you’re probably not a journalist; you’re just a blogger who likes to daydream. And, you know, that’s exactly not what I want to be doing. I’m boring myself and I’d probably be boring you lot if I wrote more and didn’t bother to dress up the text and make it more exciting than it actually is.

So, is this the end of this blog? Yes. Definitely. No doubt about it. At least, it’s the end of this blog in this format. I’ve done long-form blogging. I’ve done it off-and-on since 1996 and, when on, I usually wrote 6-10 paragraph posts for each day (even if I wrote several days at once and backfilled them). And I’ve done microblogging. Twitter’s too terse and traditional blogging’s too loose. So, I need to find some middle way between the two. Technically, that’s FriendFeed but I want a little more flexibility and I want it to be under my own site and done in my own way.

So, this is yet another in a long series of blog failures and I’m fine with that. I’ll figure out exactly what it is that I want to do that will make me want to write stuff here rather than FriendFeed. Some medium format blogging. Basically, probably a homespun version of Posterous.

Until then, relax that there will be one less douchebag out there trying to blog about technology as if he were an expert or a professional. I’m neither. Although I just might be a douchebag.

Listen, I’m old and cranky going on older and crankier. What may have begun innocently with a Commodore 64 and a printer (no one in 1982 seemed to truly understand how essential a floppy drive was) has ended up with a variety of Apple products the power of which seems to be designed solely to funnel increasingly potent irritations from the Internet right at my face.

Now, it’s not all bad, surely. But as time goes on, it’s becoming increasingly evident that we’re going to need sophisticated tools and a few gallons of gin to be able to filter out the rubbish from the rubies. It’s becoming equally apparent that the best tools for the job aren’t clever scripts and iPhone apps but are people. Word-of-mouth has always been the best way to spread genius (and lies) and it still is. If anyone tries to tell you that social media is anything more than a bunch of people made of equal parts curiosity and opinion who are essentially abusing the crap out of tin cans and string networked in a star topography, then they can probably also finish the sentence in an impressive way.

At first, I hated the very idea of social networking and that’s because I’m bitter. You see, I’m a proto-blogger. I was doing this since before the word ‘blog’ was invented. Most of us were mocked ruthlessly by everyone who wasn’t one of us and now they’re all OMG MYSPACE. But I caved in, joined Twitter, and then quickly got into FriendFeed and then suddenly I stopped wanting to blog at all (and, by the way, I still hate the word blog; when I got started, it was called an online journal which to me sounds more dignified).

It’s been over a year now and I’ve got the itch again. This time, though, I think I’ve built up the momentum that’ll keep this thing going where other attempts have failed. I have a built-in audience at FriendFeed of nearly 1,200 people, I’m palling around with some of the biggest names in the scene (such as Monique), and I’ve got a fairly respectable reputation in spite of myself. If nothing else, I’m poised to embarrass myself in a legendary and spectacular way.

This is a nonsense post, really. But I felt like the first post needed to be some kind of statement of purpose and so I guess this is the best I can come up with on such short notice. This is a personal site designed to be a companion to my FriendFeed account. Hopefully they can form some kind of disturbing (and sticky) symbiotic relationship the results of which are fortune and glory.

Honestly, don’t expect any original thoughts here. I’m not trying to be the next Scoble. I’m in no position to scoop the big dogs. I just plan be contrary to what everyone else is saying. Also expect self-absorbed posts about the games I’m playing, the technology and software I’m using, random rabid ravings about Apple products, bitching about movies, and the occasional foray into religion. I am a practicing Jew in a land of atheists after all. I’m so… quaint! Like music on a CD that someone actually paid for.

The way I look at it is like this––and I’m being serious here so listen up: I may not have anything original to say but hopefully what I do say is entertaining.

And, for the record, I don’t hate individual people but, man, when you lot get together in a tizzyfied bundle? THOROUGHLY UNBEARABLE.

And finally, expect lots of uppercase here. LOTS.

Oh, and I need a job.