Does blogging about something really make you an expert?

Teh interweb is a marvellous thing. It gives us a voice and it gives us a platform to express our opinions. We love it, and there are now so many millions of blogs being created every day that no one can really be bothered to count them anymore.

Imagine that plethora of voices reaching out across the ether, sharing their thoughts on politics, on the media, on relationships, on shoes, hell, on the weather. Some of them have been going for years, creating little pods of self-referential knowledge, referencing and cross-referencing each other, more and more thoughts thrown out there into the clutter of cyberspace.

But does that really make them worthwhile? Does the sheer length of time you've spent talking about something make you an expert, a self-appointed social commentator? I'm not sure. Is the Oxford Circus preacher a serious religious analyst, just because he's been there for so many years? Would you really expect the Daily Telegraph to seek out his opinion for an in-depth discussion on the state of the Catholic Church, or the declining Anglican congregation?

Maybe you would if he was a blogger. If he'd been putting his opinions out there via RSS feed and not a loudspeaker, who knows where he'd be today. More and more it seems to me that being a blogger makes your opinion worthwhile; apparently, the platform gives credibility to the content. And what a platform it is!

In its favour, blogging has given many silent voices a chance to be heard. Think of the war zone bloggers; think of the escorts (led by the inimitable Belle de Jour); and all the other societies and sub-sets of societies who have been brought to the public's attention in a way that a decade ago they couldn't even have dreamed of. I'm not arguing with the value of that. But on the other hand… on the other hand, you have Me, the ego. The voice that repeats persistently: if I can be heard, surely I must be worth listening to?

Take me as an example. You see, I know that I can run everyone else's lives much better than they can. I can improve their clothes, their hair, their shoes and probably their love lives to boot. (Not yours, of course; you, O Best Beloved, are my honourable exception.)

Of course I may, heaven forbid, be wrong. Perhaps my shoes are just as bad as the Uggs and Crocs that threaten to overwhelm our streets. But either way, does giving me a blog really make my opinion any more valid? Wouldn't that just be a bit crazy?

And yet every day we have national press and magazines including comment from "leading bloggers", people who have nothing to say that makes them stand out from the crowd, nothing to add that any one of the readers couldn't have added for themselves. But somehow, because they said it online, in this exciting medium that all of a sudden is sitting firmly within the mainstream mindset, it has more value.

Some industries are more guilty than others. Where once there was a handful, there are now scores of marketing blogs analysing the industry, discussing the latest trends and critiquing competitive campaigns - many written by people with more years of University than they've had in the industry, and for the sole purpose of self promotion. Am I claiming that's a bad thing? Not necessarily. It doesn't invalidate their viewpoints, and surely the beauty of blogging is that it can bring each and everyone of these new and unique viewpoints out from under their bushels.

But neither does it validate those viewpoints. It remains just an opinion and we, O Best Beloved, are no more or less than we were before we put it there. Uploading it into the uncaring void does not make you an expert on your topic - and especially not when it's a topic that rests firmly on the foundations of self-promotion.

I wouldn’t take this post too seriously, though. You've only got my word for it, after all, and what am I? Just another blogger floating out there in endless cyberspace. Who made me the expert?