Last week a Guardian/ICM poll showed that a third of 14 to 21-year-olds have their own online content, primarily in the form of a blog, and that a new blog is started every second. By most calculations, that makes the blog a more reproductively successful entity than the Chinese.

Of course, the blog-a-second statistic is best considered mindful that, as with all diaries, there’s also a blog abandoned every second. Well I remember my “flamboyant” friend Greg launching his blog. He e-mailed all his friends the link, and opened with a stirring manifesto on what readers could expect in the forthcoming months. This was written, somewhat disturbingly, in the third person, and apparently in the persona of a mad drag queen (“Read as the self-proclaimed It Boy romps his way through canapé land in London, Paris, New York and Miami . . . there’s tantrums, drama and SCREAMING all the way”). Greg lives in Dalston, and gets giddy if he doesn’t have a nap at 5pm.

Perhaps exhausted by this high-kicking entrance, he posted only eight more times before giving up — acknowledging potential disappointment with a tender “Apologies to my fans”. His next attempt at a blog, a year later, ran to a mere six posts. One of these didn’t even involve any typing — it was just a picture of him, smoking a fag.

Still, I think Greg’s apathy could have saved him a great deal of heartache. For what the blogger rarely considers is how easily the blog can be used against them. Last summer a New York nanny was fired when her employer discovered her blog. Her boss was unhappy to learn that the nanny used sleeping pills at night and considered Lizzie Bennet in the BBC’s Pride and Prejudice “hot”. Of course, the whole affair is profoundly perplexing to the 98 per cent of parents who would be delighted to find that their nanny was an internet geek, getting a solid eight hours a night, who considered Jane Austen to be pornography.

This was an extreme case of cause and effect, however. Most of the time, bloggers have no idea that their candour is to their detriment. Most, for instance, wouldn’t think twice about documenting a difficult day at the office, followed by an evening when a date reveals that he wants to join the “Mile Low Club” — sex in a disused tin-mine.

Alas, such tender honesty leaves one vulnerable to “Schadenblogging”. This is the logical technological progression from “Schadengoogling”, where one Googles to discover embarrassing, disdainful and otherwise gratifying pieces of information about an enemy. With the Schadenblog, one — fairly obviously — surfs the internet to read the online diary of a hated one. Traditionally, one Schadenblogs a few drinks to the good, and with a friend on hand to whom one can repeat choice quotes. Other Schadenbloggers prefer to indulge in company time, merely forwarding the link to everyone they know in an e-mail entitled “Look what the loathsome, joyless freakbag has done now”.

Of course, to Schadenblog is only human. Who, in possession of a mithering former boyfriend — one who was minded to dump you when your ten-year-old brother accidentally spilt Yop on his jacket — would not wish occasionally to “see how he was getting on”, should he blog?

Alas, I can report that the past few years have not been so good for Martin. The people who live downstairs threw a party and didn’t invite him. “I could see candles, and hear music and laughter,” he wrote, sadly. Three sets of friends threw parties on the same day, and didn’t invite him — “even though one was just a two-minute walk from my house”. Even the photos make good Schadenblog. The first byline shot, though artfully blurred, revealed that male-pattern baldness had become a pressing issue. Possibly aware of this, in midsummer he replaced the picture with one of his cat.

Last week, any putative ex-girlfriend who had bookmarked the page carefully would have hit the Schadenblog jackpot — a pitiful appeal for shelter in the face of imminent eviction. Surprisingly, given the compelling picture of conviviality that he sketches, no one has yet offered him a berth. Maybe giving the impression that he is a large, depressive, blogging cat has been the deal-breaker.

This isn’t the worst case of Schadenblogging, by any stretch of the imagination. I have a friend whose vile ex-husband would post his own, thrillingly bad, poetry on his blog. At dinner parties she would print off copies, and after pudding everyone would solemnly recite the most awful ones in unison.

The wonderful thing about Schadenblogging, of course, is that while it is an act ostensibly repugnant on both sides — one whiner, one gloater — it is, on closer inspection, one with no adverse moral consequences whatsoever. The whole point of a blog is to get someone to read it, and so, simply by the use of technology, our baser human instincts are elevated suddenly into a mutually rewarding scenario. A bit like Japanese schoolgirls selling their knickers for cash.

Banana phone? You'll regret it

I note that, on eBay, there is a listing for a “Pokia” hands-free device for mobile phones. The “Pokia” enables you to stand out from the crowd — perhaps already jaded by the hands-free phenomenon — by looking exactly as if you have a banana strapped to your head.

Tempted as I am to walk the streets bawling into a fruit, I am minded of my fundamental misgiving over the whole arena of novelty phones. This resulted from staying at a friend’s house where a novelty phone, styled like a large Friesian cow, had been bought as an “ironic” conversation piece.

Unfortunately, this being the only phone in the house, it meant that when his wife rang and told him that she wanted a divorce, he had to take the call by talking into a set of hooves. He then had to dial for a solicitor by pressing buttons on the cow’s udder.

Check and deck

Sporting news: a Bulgarian has become the first European heavyweight chessboxing champion. For those who are still a little unclear as to what Tihomir “Tiger” Titschko has actually done, chessboxing is a newly invented sport wherein contestants interchange four-minute rounds of chess with two-minute boxing rounds. Who knew? Of course, this being an unoriginal world, crasser clones can only follow. Personally, I look forward to naked, bare-knuckle tiger-punching and Su Doku.

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