Dreadful Nonsense

I recently encountered another blogging type conundrum - I was going to say 'problem', but it's not a problem for me, per se. I was wondering what you good clever people might have to say about it. That said, you good clever people haven't been playing along for a while. But let's try to group together and change this, shall we?

Someone recently told me that they'd stopped reading my blog, because it felt like 'stalking' to them. Now, I've made the joke about cyber stalking a trillion times, particularly when I've discovered a blog of a person that I didn't previously know blogged. But any time I've found a blog that belongs to someone I know or that I've met, I've always immediately given them a hello, just so they know I've found them, and so they can respond in any manner they see necessary. Most people, because blogging is just like that, don't give a darn who's reading their blog. What is written on a blog is written for wide public consumption. And if you want to hide your identity, it's very easy to hide. Use a pseudonym. Don't post personal details. Don't give out your email address, home address or phone number. Don't post up photos. Etc.

I have been writing this for too long to be able to hide that much of my identity any more, and I wouldn't really want to. I started the inadvertent twin in an attempt to see if I could write under a pseudonym. I discovered that I could, to a certain extent, but what I can't write is fiction. It becomes too boring for me too quickly. And I think if something is too difficult to blog, or too personal to put in to words that you're happy to have your name attached to, then don't, for fuck's sake, put it on the internet where people will find it.

So. What I put up here, I put up in the full and certain knowledge that there's every chance that someone I hate beyond redemption may read it. That any time I'm writing about any person, that very person has a great chance of finding this blog. That there is a striking chance that if a bus knocks me down and kills me tomorrow, all of my relatives and friends will be trawling through the archives to find the meaning of life (I'll save you the time - it's not here).

The other thing with blogs is the fact that, because you have the opportunity to portray yourself in any matter you so wish, people for the most part tend to write about themselves in a very becoming and flattering manner, giving off the impression that their life is great, that they are great, that everything and everyone they touch is deeply attractive. Some people don't have the eloquence to do this, and this sometimes entertains me more than those who do. But for the most part, a blog is not a true reflection of someone. It's a reflection of the someone they would really like to be. It's positive reinforcement of the image that you hold of yourself, and not often an accurate reflection of the person that you really are.

It's not real.

I have another friend who is well aware that I keep this, but who claims that she doesn't read it much, if at all, because she prefers to talk about things in real life. This is fair enough - it took me long enough to become interested in writing about the vagaries of other people's lives, although once you're hooked it's impossible to leave your computer without checking on the 10 or so most important clicks of the day. But I have never and would never stop reading someone else's blog - I think whatever you put up on the net is open season.

Has anyone else ever had a reaction like this?

This entry was posted on 13 October 2004 at 1:06 am. 0 comments

Dreadful Nonsense

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