Studied Authenticity is a template site that has not been modified at all. It looks the same as hundreds of other blogs, and so I wasn’t expecting anything remotely unique about the writing. Studied Authenticity’s FAQ claims the blog “will chronicle a real life.”
Studied Authenticity does chronicle the writer’s life – he reads a lot, sees movies, plays video games. He’s interested in sports. In between the posts about the writer’s day-to-day, there are some interesting entries. There’s this whole thing with the writer’s drug use and his family finding out that is thought-provoking stuff. The blog could be improved measurably if the writer would write more about how he feels about things and less about his activities on a daily basis. The entries he has that are fleshed out are pretty good.
As noted, this blog needs some personality added to the design to make it stand out from other sites. In the FAQ the writer mentions that he thinks people should be drawn to his blog for the content alone. In an ideal world, yes, people would come to read the words. But it certainly helps to have an attractive design. And unfortunately, there are some problems with linkage. All links open in a new window, which makes it necessary to keep closing windows and that can get annoying. None of the links to the FAQ, poetry page, or any archives are valid from older entries. Perhaps the writer did some maintenance work and didn’t change the URLs. Whatever the reason, it makes it very difficult to read through the archives. Some of the graphic links are broken in older entries.
There aren’t a lot of extras at Studied Authenticity. The writer has a link to some of his poetry. There is commenting capability. There are also links to other blogs the writer reads, links to sites he frequents, and links to books, movies, and music that he’s interested in. Studied Authenticity’s FAQ isn’t particularly revealing about the writer.
Overall, Studied Authenticity does what it claims to do – it chronicles the writer’s life. The design, while common, is functional. I’m not sure that I would return for another read, however.
Studied Authenticity