About this site

Plasticbag.org is a weblog site run by Tom Coates. If you don't know what a weblog is, then you should read this: What the is this site for? If you don't know who Tom Coates is, then you should probably read this: Who the hell is Tom Coates?

FAQs

Why on earth 'plasticbag.org'?
What the hell is this site for?
Who the hell is Tom Coates?

Footprints

If you wanted to buy me something, you could do so at my wishlist. I've won Best European Weblog (twice) and Best Gay Weblogger once. I made a little image to celebrate. If you wanted to read some of my professional film reviews, then go to the BBC. I'm a card in Web Trumps. You can watch me spin around on a mountain-top a la Sound of Music (pop-up).

Credits

Pencils and Inks by Tom Coates, after a structure by Jason Kottke and incorporating design elements co-created by Tom Coates and Denise Wilton. Colours and finishes by Tom Coates.

What the hell is this site for?

Some people coming to plasticbag.org for the first time have e-mailed me to ask me what it's for - what it's about... More often than not the people who ask these questions are from outside the community of 'webloggers'. Sometimes they have stumbled upon the site by typing something dumb into Google.

With a new design going up and new spaces to play with (as yet unfilled by crap), I thought I'd take the opportunity to explain a bit about the site to all the naifs and debutantes who have yet to experience the horror we call "Blog".

On personal sites

First and foremost - plasticbag.org is a personal site - and by that I mean a site made by an individual that lets them express their drunken opinions in a public place. Personal sites have existed in various forms since the beginning of the web. Indeed if you think of websites as the equivalent of cave walls, then they've probably existed since the beginning of recorded time.

Today they're mostly pretty bizarre places - only interesting to members of the author's immediate family - and then mostly as evidence of mental incapacity. They're the places where people put up photographs of the infected ear of their cat (let's call him 'Muffy'), and introduce their younger sister's Appalachian overbite to the laughter and pointed fingers of millions of office workers. Personal sites often have hit counters on them that read '14 hits'.

I am proud to declare plasticbag.org to be another pointless member of this global fraternity. I kiss you.

On weblogs and journals

If you want to be more specific about the kind of site that plasticbag.org is - if you're that desperate to define it - then (like me) you should probably find a proper hobby, like go-carting or ritual goat sodomy. But if we assume for a moment that you're not going to do that, then I'd probably start by directing you towards words like 'weblog' or 'online journal'.

A weblog - strictly speaking - is a site that displays its content in a purely timely fashion (ie. by day or by week) and which provides lists of links to 'interesting' places on the interhighweb. Think about it this way - while a non-weblog personal site might show a picture of your Muffy's ear infection, a weblog might provide links to sites about homeopathic feline treatments over the centuries.

Journals, on the other hand, are more like publically displayed diaries - they may be structured like weblogs but rather than being services, they're more like personal writing projects. Here, for example, you might get to hear a day-to-day description of the treatment of Muffy's ear infection, and how emotionally draining it was treating the little bugger, and how much the author wished they'd bought a goldfish instead (let's call the goldfish 'Manky').

In actual fact - as you've probably realised - the boundary between the two types of site isn't that well-defined. The same site that talks at length about how much more fun goldfish 'Manky' might be over the cat 'Muffy' might the next day be nothing more than a list of links to sites about cat-assassins and funeral homes. And the next might only consist of a picture of Manky the goldfish looking smug in a tank, with a caption reading, "My new best friend".

Time for a few examples, I think. Some sites are mostly journal content, while some are pretty much just links. A very successful format is links with commentary and odds and ends of personal content. And one of my favourite sites is just a great big fruity mix of the lot.

Get to the point...

As time has passed the distinctions between the way that a personal site, weblog and journal might be maintained or function have faded considerably - and many sites pick and choose the things they want to write about as the mood takes them. But there's still a kind of culture around each type of site - journals often link to journals, weblogs to weblogs - one might be more insular, the other more outward-looking. So for what it's worth - I consider plasticbag.org to be a weblog - and a damn fine one at that...

But what's the point?

But after all that semantics - after all that talk of goldfish and kitten - what is it all for? Weblogs allow people to find new and interesting links on the internet. They let people read the soap-operas (small and large) of real people's lives. They give you access to the news stories from the people who were actually there on the ground. And it's a space where you can get to know another human being personally - through the immediacy of e-mail.

And there are so many weblogs, personal sites and journals out there - they represent such a wealth of different experiences, backgrounds, sexualities, lifestyles and cultures - that there will always be something there to keep you entertained - long after you've been imprisoned for cruelty to animals...

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