Blogging as Narcissism

One of the reasons I took a little blogging break (besides needing to spend time getting my City Of Heros character BluShield to level 50) was because I found my posts getting smaller, pettier and less and less interesting to people in general. I looked at all the stuff I had blogged and tried to see where it was going wrong. After sorting through 2 years worth of good and bad, I made some new rules for what gets posted and how often. In restarting the blog, I decided to highlight the:

Amusing
Entertaining
Transmundane
Weird
Interesting
Science
Father vs. Son conversations

I decided I would only lightly blog about the:
Political
Religious
Personal Medical problems

and I would try to studiously avoid:
what I had for breakfast/lunch/dinner
how much weight I lifted and when
where I was going and who I met (unless it really fell into one of the top categories)
dreams I had
personal information about me, my family etc.
the Iraq War
the president
why other, actually famous bloggers are off their collective rockers and how they should Listen To Me
any diatribe unlikely to be seen by the person I am ranting about (e.g. Ann Coulter, Bill O'Rielly, Travis)

In short, I decided that blogging was an act of narcissism but that even my ego had limits which should be respected.

Why go through explaining all this?

A great example of why I think I was on to something came up today:(via Pharnygula)

You may have heard the disturbing news story about the Oklahoma murderer/pedophile/cannibal—just to make it a little creepier, he had a blog. (I don't expect it will stay up for too long, so read The Insomnia Report for excerpts.)
He says things like this:

I mean it, I really need a girlfriend. It's not just depressing anymore, it's actually starting to have a negative effect on my mental state I think. For example, my fantasies are just getting weirder and weirder. Dangerously weird. If people knew the kinds of things I think about anymore, I'd probably be locked away. No probably about it, I know I would be.

Mostly, though, he comes off as pathetic and banal.