by Tiffany Lee Brown

Let's just get something out there in the open: fuck you. No, really. If you're gonna read rants and laugh or get indignant or agree with them in a holy righteous fury, or think, "Whoever wrote this is such a dork" or "Whoever wrote this shouldn't be allowed to have a forum in which to speak their mind," you must first accept this fact: fuck you. The most renowned street person in California is undoubtedly the very intelligent, long-bearded, Berkeley-based cross-dresser named the Hate Man. He won't speak to you till you tell him you hate him. Only then, the wise man knows, can an honest conversation begin. In that spirit, let me say it again: fuck you.

Lucky, lucky you! You live in a world of media and entertainment options architected especially to coddle, excite, delight and stroke you, affirming your hopeful half-belief that you and your society are okey-dokey but (important caveat!) empty, dissatisfied, hungry and inadequate enough to warrant buying something cool, listening to something new, "treating yourself," buying a special new basketball with a swoosh on it, and/or drinking yourself into pathetic oblivion at any of the bars listed herein.

Then there's us: the geeked-out, pale-fleshed, pervicacious online self-publishers who have nothing to sell you. Whatever shall you do, wherever shall you go? Frankly my dear, we don't give a damn. Some of us are attention sluts, some are introverts who can barely squeak out a LiveJournal posting. Some use ranting as an armchair alternative to homicide, terrorism and legitimately institutionalizable outbursts of hysteria. Our ranting and sobbing - even our amusing little pointers to local events or silly Flash movies - are not dependent on you or the Nielsen ratings. We would keep doing this if we had zero feedback, zero readership.

We are compulsive freaks and we've found the perfect medium. We are the Ranting Bloggers, and before you attempt to digest our bitter politics and petty obscurities, you must first let this essential message sink in: fuck you.

And what, pray tell, do we rant about? Online diarists bare their claws at parents, friends, co-workers, bosses and significant others, both real and imaginary. With our cutting, shrill voices, Ranting Bloggers (Rogers?) attack potholes, alien conspiracies, television commercials and bad art. Some rant about computers, blogging software, magazine articles about blogging and other blogs. Many political bloggers may toe the same line of nicey-nicey yadda-yadda that makes the editorial pages of any newspaper a thumping bore, but Ranting Political Bloggers take their issues to the mat.

Where else but on my own blog could I call the alleged President of the United States a "drooling, hamster-licking fuckwad with a webbed brain?"

Unlike the neatly categorized world of corporate media, where so-called news is on the front page, fashion is in the glossy rags and "reality" is on Fox, blogs are veritable fonts of equal opportunity ranting. Sure, many hobbyists devote their blogs to one particular topic - toenail shavings, for example, or 15th century Cubist poetry - but we fiery ranters cannot be contained by such flimsy conceptual borders. No. I will expose the evil fucks at Monsanto in one breath, discuss the merits of various cooking salts in the next, then wax indignant when Google censors my friend's blog because they "advocated against George Bush." I will take the cocktailers and waiters of Portland to task for mispronouncing the names of drinks and being snotty about it, create sarcastic headlines (Pentagon Secret Report to Bush: "Global Warming is Going To Kick Our Collective ASS!"), and snark at James Joyce's grandson.

I'll admit it: I also post MP3s and reviews and perfectly harmless things. I cherish my few thousand readers, whoever the hell you lunatics are. But I'm not doing it for you. I'm doing it because I believe in verbal vomit. I'm doing it because blogs are the new punk rock. I'm doing it because, well, fuck you. The author is an ornery crank who maintains the weblogs Magdalen Sez: www.magdalen.com/blog, Corporate Collapse: www.corporatecollapse.com, and Blogging Sucks: www.bloggingsucks.com. She got pulled into this world as a guest blogger for Boing Boing: www.boingboing.net, and contributes regularly to 2GQ: www.2GQ.org.