Must You Read Your Friend's Boring Blog?

Posted on May 12, 2005

Some friends of bloggers are becoming overwhelmed by the volume of blogs they have to read each day. Mark Bazer a journalist for Tribune Media Services, is "getting blogged down" by all the blogs his friends are launching:

Every week, it seems, another friend e-mails to announce that he, or he and his wife, or he and his wife and his baby, have launched a blog on which I can follow the intimate details of their lives, as if I were not already bored enough with the intimate details of my own.

Do you have to read your friend's blog or is it okay to say no? The answer is hopefully no since a blogger should respect their friend's time. Bloggers cannot expect friends to read every word of every blog post they make. Mark Bazer certainly hopes the answer is no:

What does concern me, though, is this altogether frightening question: If I am to remain a good friend to my blogging pals, am I required to read their blogs? Please, tell me the answer is no. Because if it's yes, I think this will be the end of a number of beautiful friendships. There's just no getting around it: Some of my friends' blogs are so mind-numbingly banal they have me wishing for the early days of the Web when the most exciting thing to do was search for a Blues Traveler screensaver.

It would get very overwhelming were we required to read every post on every friend's blog. It is probably not even possible for those in the media industry who are more likely to have lots of blogging friends.