Blogging empowers, brings confidence. I am who I say I am. Suddenly popularity is bestowed on the braniacs who missed being the life of the party the first time around (unless you were a young Chris Locke passing out your homemade jug of acid to the student body of the UofR and single-handedly changing the genetic makeup of western New York). Aside from those always-bold web personalities, many of us who make up the blog community (and the good folks at google) are just smart, really creative, unassuming, regular people. Not flashy... our messages are our meaning. It's not java script or flash intros that make us say "Ah ha!" It's good thinking, good writing, and good humor. We fight; we make peace. We joke; we laugh. We learn; we link. We create; we appreciate.
And you know, the Real World could learn a lot from us.