Vanity Thy Name is Blogger

Blogging has become a Singaporean phenomenon not unlike bubble tea, pork floss buns and portuguese egg-tarts.

Bubble tea was fun, novel and tasty when it first arrived. People who discovered it first felt proud to have found a delicious new treat. But a good secret cannot stay secret for long - Word spread, popularity caught on and whoosh before you know it, bubble tea everywhere! Happy Cup! Yummy Cup! Bubble Cup! Etc. Cup!

The inevitable problem was 2 pronged :
One, in a bid to jump on the bandwagon, many vain people started selling crap-tasting, cheap rip off bubble tea, which put off lots of people who were curious late-comers into the phenomenon.
Two: many people who were always put off by the idea of bubble tea got even more peeved because the disgusting stuff was actually getting such attention. Adding fuel to the fire was that landmark report about ho bad bubble tea was for ya...those teeny black starch balls apparently were hyper calorific! Disgruntlement and diatribes ensued. The backlash of bubble tea hit - and tons of bubble tea shops found themselves closing. People moved on to Roti Boy. But the truly yummy bubble tea shops remained, as did those who always loved it for what it was, and genuine bubble tea lived on forever, quietly ever after.

ok my starting point, is that....that's what I think about blogging.

The medium is not the message: There are vain bloggers, wannabe bloggers, prejudiced bloggers etc. but there are genuine ones, honest ones, and entertaining ones. Intrinsically, blogs like paint, pixels, poems, songs are just repositories of people's personalities. One cannot judge the medium by the message. They are separate.

But is blogging a vain thing?

why of course, yes, it is!

But so is one's entire existence, every action, every word, every breath we breathe is vanity, vanity, vanity. Blogging, acting, singing, making music, writing poetry, having intelligent conversation, playing games, playing sports etc. etc. - all are mediums for Vanity to rear its nasty head.

Pride haunts everything we do because of our earthly, ungodly predisposition towards sin. So what are we to do?

Recognise we are intrinsically vain, pray for humility
Never let your guard down. Always be prepared to edit what you said.
Always be prepared to admit a wrong. Be responsible.
Know that with blogging, you intrinsically give up privacy and like it or not, you gotta balance the need for self-expression together with the need to edify and encourage.

As Mad Eye Moody would roar," CONSTANT VIGILANCE!!!!!"

My cybername is neonangel. I am a blogger. I am vain.
I like an audience. I like being patted on the back. I like seeing comments on my pages. I try to curb it but vanity taints my every post - sometimes 5% vanity, sometimes 90% vanity, but aiyah, always got vanity one lah no matter what! When will my blogs not be vain? Wellllll, if God decides to be funny and sets up blogging points in heaven, then yeah, maybe Post-2ND COMING then....no more vanity in my blogs.

meanwhile, just as I love bubble tea still...so do I love blogging. It has brought me new friends, new insights, and new openness with old friends who open up in the blogging medium in ways that they never did in the normal talking-in-real-life medium.

It's a cool medium, but one fraught with many responsibilities to consider.

Blogs are not private things. They are by nature public, exposed and tied to an outside world that calls for an answer to what you say and what you do.

But then again, so is the entire Christian life. :)

PS: Red Milk Bubble Tea kicks so much ass on a hot day. Peach Yogurt Sunrise Bubble Shake also macham shiok.
My fave bubble tea takeaway is the one just outside Orchard Emerald. $1.90 goodness plus free tissue. whoo.