Oxblog asks "Why Don't Hot Chicks Blog?"

[randomness]

(Actually, Crooked Timber poses the question and Oxblog offers some hypotheses, but Oxblog's title was catchier.)

My immediate thoughts were a) there are plenty of them on LJ, but of course b) LJ doesn't count. Why LJ doesn't count when bloggers discuss blogs, and why there are plenty of women here strike me as interesting questions.
There are a lot of people who don't really consider LJ a blog. Certainly LJ has the reputation for being an insular place where people talk mainly to and about their friends on subjects that are only of interest to themselves.
Personally, I don't actually mind the reputation, because by and large--aside from the food and lodging listings--that's why I blog.
LJ's focus on people you actually know may be more attractive to people who care more about social interaction. My gut feeling is that this tends--for cultural reasons, perhaps--to attract more women.

To be fair, Crooked Timber was originally talking about academic blogs. Oxblog theorizes that women may not be so eager to join the cut and thrust of online argument. It might be, though, that we social people have other things to talk about.

Comments

[amelia-g.livejournal.com]

I think that people also tend to feel that LJ doesn't count because it is a more limited environment. Much of the beauty of blogging online is the freedom of it. A single insignificant person can say whatever he or she wants and there is the possibility that millions will see it and his or her view can have an impact. LJ, however, strongly limits what topics can be spoken about and anyone who becomes at all high profile in their system tends to end up hearing from the abuse department about things that are clearly normal to do within LJ. I feel like LJ is sort of a self-limiting system where no individual diary within it is allowed to become too big. There are limits on how large a friends list can get etc. So it seems to count less. You are probably right that the social aspect of LJ makes it more hot chick friendly, but it is also just a more common use of LJ to post photos in it than it is in other sorts of blogs. So perhaps there are some very hot chicks with blogs, but their breasts don't show behind their punditry.