The Penn "Blogosphere": Apparently A Thing

In news that would feel more appropriate were it still 2003, the DP ran a story today on Penn student blogs, and it's equal parts baffling, silly, and just...strange? Our crusty old colleagues who still believe in the future of print have really stumbled a gold mine with this one! We think this topic is non-newsworthy (but just non-newsworthy enough to merit a post on UTB) for a number of reasons: first and foremost, Penn students are young people. And for young people today, maintaining a blog is almost standard practice, going back to the middle-school era of Xanga and LiveJournal. Second, the "Penn blogosphere" isn't really a community of any kind. The only thing that these blogs have in common is Penn student authorship. Third, like, so what? My mom has a blog for Christ's sake. Regardless, here's a list of the things that we learned about Penn students' loosely associated blogging habits.

1. Penn kids sometimes blog with Wordpress, but also, they sometimes blog with Tumblr!

On one end of the spectrum, First Call, a Penn literary journal, uses the blog platform Wordpress to archive past issues. But newer blogs such as Sleeping in Van Pelt, which regularly posts photographs of people napping in the library, often use microblogging platforms like Tumblr.

2. Students also write blogs when they're abroad! These blogs are incredibly boring and every single one contains a slight variation on the exact same story.

Rather than a play-by-play of his time away, College junior and DP photographer Jake Werlin’s blog chronicles memorable stories from Buenos Aires, Argentina, like the time two old ladies pretended they were helping him remove bird poop from his backpack and then made off with his wallet and camera.

3. Penn students also blog about music, occasionally.