Blog off

I used to complain about how the Nerve blog was interfering with my personal life. Having to generate content that was specifically hinged around my private experiences was making me an outsider to them.

I was supposed to have the camera on, in front of my face, pointed at those nearest and dearest to me at the most intimate moments, so that I’d have a record for later, for an audience who only seemed interested, largely, in a rather limited scope of subject matter.

Sometimes I feel that I need to keep updating this blog because a blog that lies dormant is a blog that dies, it’s a different sort of pressure, and mostly, when I feel pressure to do something, you can bet I won’t be doing it.

Oof.

I feel like most people who blog don’t keep a diary, I’d like to know the stats on that.

My mother is an epic, prolific diarist. She has tomes of illegible, WH Smith, thin-lined notebooks. I often wonder if the illegibility of her writing is part of the cathartic experience. She records, presumably in great detail considering the pages and pages she fills, but even I’ve seen her not be able to read her own writing. It becomes a code. She has the relief of expression but then it’s like writing a letter only to burn it.

Blogs aren’t like that. Obviously. They’re intended to be read. Like leaving your diary open in the living room. Like writing diary entries specifically with the intention of leaving it open in the living room.

Long ago I had a funny little picture blog, with digital drawings and accompanying limericks, I loved that it was broadcast to the world but was certainly only read by strangers. I miss that; I want to be the old bag lady at the park fountain who just wants to tell my story to you, in its entirety, especially because I’ll never see you again.

The fact is I don’t want to write an old fashioned diary, I do want an audience, but I want, I guess, anonymity in my outpourings. I want I want I want. I suppose I should make a fake blog, take on an assumed identity, but I’ve always disliked that. Pseudonyms and online personae, seems like a kind of escapism that belies personal...issues. Nicknames are one things, well-honed alter egos, quite another.

I just read this. Which is an extreme version of the virtual escapist problem.

And then I have a friend who has fashioned a completely false Myspace page; it’s so subtly constructed that you’d never know. The whole time I’m looking at her page, reading her fake ‘about me’ and bullshit music preferences, I keep asking Kate, “but WHY is she doing this?” I just don’t get it. To fuck with people? To feel what it’s like to be a Goth, Lindsay Lohan loving, prick teasing, highschooler?

I know a guy who has gotten an extremely lucrative book deal out of his blog. The only thing is, the person he blogs as, doesn’t exist. I can’t say too much about it, but even the book publishers don’t realize that the blog they’ve purchased is completely fictitious, ingeniously deceptive, for sure, but totally fake nonetheless.

And with the availability of all this information and pseudo-information, what’s a person to do?

I don’t know anyone who hasn’t indulged an unhealthy dose of web stalking. I for instance was “researching” the girl I fought in the finals at nationals; I come to discover that she is an incredibly breathtaking actress. She’s been in a large number of award winning European films. In her movie reel, you can see her beaming with an undeniable star quality, she looks timeless, enchanting. I look around her site more, and see pictures of her, she’s beautiful, dressed in avant guard fashion, posing, cheekily, a far cry from the sweaty mess I had encountered the week before. I click on her music page and am astounded at how much I like her songs. Fueled by the giddy feelings of nationals, I emailed her. Wanting to thank her for playing a role in an experience that has changed me forever. I’m naïve. I never heard from her.

Oops, I think I breached the rules.

And that’s what so odd about all this virtual expression, it seems to be a reaching out, it seems to be saying, “Hello, you, anyone, can you hear me?” “You, stranger, look at me, go ahead, look at me” “You, I’m too afraid to talk to you directly, listen to this” “Hey, world, what are your thoughts on my thoughts?” Even so, there’s a line, and for some, it isn’t meant to be crossed.

I’ve read that one byproduct of the internet age is that people have become more selective with their intimate social circle, not because we’re all plugged in and checked out, but rather because the web affords us a whole new ginormous pool from which to find friends. Now we can find the ultimate perfect best friend, but they maybe live in Uganda, and as we become more comfortable, perhaps even preferring, Internet communication, we can spend all our time with our Ugandan pal, and stop wasting time with the less compatible people who are actually in our physical proximity. I’m a little dubious about this study, but I get it to the extent that if a person is literate enough, engaging enough to keep me stimulated in a written repartee, I may well choose to spend my time typing to them, as opposed to getting my face gnawed off by a chatty yet dull physical friend.

Which brings me to the odd breed, the people who read your blogs, who you see in person, but who don’t REALLY tell you that they read your blog. That’s a weird one. I’ve caught people knowing things abut me that they only could have gotten from my blog, and there’s an awkward pause, a furtive glance and an unspoken agreement, to move forward, knowing that you know what I know you know, you know?

I don’t know.

Mils