Blogs exist for…?

In the Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde wrote

Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

Now, Wilde was a man who dealt with aesthetics. He was concerned with all that is beautiful. After all, he was a playwright, poet, and writer of novels. He appreciated art in any form (and flamboyant clothing). He wasn’t interested in only the aesthetics of literature but people. It was as if he tried to reflect what he wrote. To him, art existed for the sake of art, not for any other purpose. However, this claim of his is contradictory, for his “art” made some judgment on Victorian values among other things. So it goes; that in some way sums up Wilde.

So why care so much about this claim of his? Other than making an excellent soundbyte, it can pertain to anything. It’s not just books that are well written or badly written, it’s people that are well dressed or badly dressed, it’s cars that are well-designed or badly designed. This statement extends to everything, particularly blogs. They can be written and designed (I’ll have to come up with an idea about dressing blogs later), either well or badly. We don’t consider someone wearing a turtleneck underneath an appliquéd vest as morally offensive, rather we say they are a bad dresser. As far as blogs go, we can say they are badly written. But we can’t judge the content in them as moral or immoral. In this case, the “art” has to be reflecting something, or as Wilde would argue, existing just because it can, and does.

I would not argue, however, that blogs exist for the sake of being blogs. From some angle we can approach them as art; but for many blog authors, there is a reason behind writing. They aren’t writing merely to have their work admired. It seems rather lofty to ascribe blogs as art, existing only for art’s sake. However, it does make sense to say they exist as well written or badly written.

However, we should consider the potential for artistic achievement in the medium. Yes, this is all so confusing: Wilde was confusing and inconsistent. There is just no way to pin down the what and why of the blog. But we can come to the conclusion that they are a legitimate form of expression, and they can be judged on basic writing conventions. Thus, they are simply well written or badly written.