On #selfies and Hashtags and Followers and Blogs

I have always been conflicted with writing a blog.  During graduate school at USC, I loved it when I started ShishBoomBang because I was new to Los Angeles and needed a vehicle to journal my adventures.  I also needed an efficient way to keep in touch with my friends and family as well as track the places that I visited and the places that I wanted to check out.  Rather than write 20+ personal emails while working as a full-time student, I just sent my kinfolk a link (how sweet of me).  Now, I am more-or-less back to the occasional and much more intimate snail mail.  

In the past year or so, I have got to wondering, are blogs egomaniacal?  They are the #selfie of a journal. Have social media applications like Facebook and Instagram made it ok for us to track and post our every move, our every meal, our every outfit?  Will our kids look back on technology circa 2014 and ask us "What were you thinking, you crazed self-centered beings?"

The thing is, even though the Internet is saturated with first person narrative.  WE, as a collective, care.  We care about the I, me's, and mine's of other people.  We follow. We like. We share. We tag. We hashtag.  When we could just opt out from the smart phone culture of today, we don't.  At all, ever. 

Some bloggers that I follow get upwards of 25K likes per photo they post within minutes of posting.  That's a whole lotta #instalove.  Do blogs actually benefit their readers or do they just glorify the author? or both? I think both. That's why I am here contributing to the blogosphere and posting a selfie. #happymonday