The World According to Blog
The Internet is in what can only be described as a "Blog Bubble." Blogs are everywhere and everyone seems have one. (Or two!)
A lot of people here have their own blogs. I'm curious how everyone decides what to write about. Some people don't like to use their real names and avoid talking about their real life. Others mask themselves in pseudonyms and talk about their relationships. Some pick a topic (like politics or music or sports) and write endlessly about it. Others find themselves in a kind of blogging community and aim their posts in that direction. Sometimes the blogoshphere seems a little like the lunchroom in high school.
More generally, how has blogging affected your life? How has it enriched it? Is it just another tool for distraction at work like computer Solitare or is it a deeper facet of a new kind of global reality?
A lot of people here have their own blogs. I'm curious how everyone decides what to write about. Some people don't like to use their real names and avoid talking about their real life. Others mask themselves in pseudonyms and talk about their relationships. Some pick a topic (like politics or music or sports) and write endlessly about it. Others find themselves in a kind of blogging community and aim their posts in that direction. Sometimes the blogoshphere seems a little like the lunchroom in high school.
More generally, how has blogging affected your life? How has it enriched it? Is it just another tool for distraction at work like computer Solitare or is it a deeper facet of a new kind of global reality?
posted by elad at 8:07 AM
5 Comments:
I am now a blog addict. I love to read blogs, post on blogs, comment on blogs. I definetly think of it is a "lunchroom" where you can sit and chat and share ideas at your own pace.
I'm a compulsive journaler off the computer too... so that is my private place to reflect and my blog serves the additional purpose of feedback, but also not being insular in my expression. sometimes when I've been writing a lot I feel as if I've been going crazy in my head and I start to only make sense to myself in my journal.
blogging shifts that to this wonderful shouting out into space. I know friends read it to know where I am. I know strangers read it and get a short piece of who I am. The fact that whatever I am saying is reaching anyone at all even if I will never know who, helps me get out of my bubble.
And I love that I can keep in touch of old friends or acquantances without having to have that "so what have you been up to" conversation. I can just read their blogs and comment or speak to them about specific events. Its a fabulous communication.
Blogging has become an incredible tool for keeping up with far-flung friends - and I have a bunch because we've moved around so much. It's more convenient than a mass email, because I can choose when I go to pick up my updates. It's more public so I can keep up with people that I don't know quite well enough to correspond with extensively but in whom I'm interested. It's less personal than individual email correspondence, and there is a certain loss of intimacy in switching over to a blog-heavy medium. But I feel that what's gained in convenience, volume of information and breadth of acquaintance makes up for that loss.
My best friend is a reference librarian and a details geek, so I find myself blogging daily details a lot more than I might of my own volition because if I don't she'll comment and ask. I write about whatever's on my mind, mainly my daily life and my writing life. There's a certain line of personal exposure that I don't generally cross (at least not in posts that aren't filtered to a specific group of users) but I'm a pretty open person and there's not a tremendous amount that I don't feel comfortable discussing in public. It's not the sort of blog that you'd want to read if you didn't know me, but it's quite useful in keeping in touch with folks. And I'm completely addicted to blogs and read tons of them, mainly the personal blogs rather than the more focused political ones or what have you.
And I came over from barzak's blog; it's good to "see" you!
good to "hear/see" you too, Jen! Thanks for stopping by and i hope you'll stick around. You can always tell a writer's posts.
Blogs are great tools for keeping in touch with distant friends, for sure. I tried to encourage a bunch of my old friends from San Francisco to come here and stay in touch but they weren't so much feeling it. It's just a critical way of using this big-fangled machine known as the Internet.
I share your distrust of mass emails, they're so impersonal, yet a personal blog can feel inviting (see: Barzak's). This blog was designed to be more discussion heavy: a bar-room chat as opposed to a long phone conversation.
Hi Jennifer - welcome to our blog!
I definetly like posting about the random facts of the day. Sometimes I feel like a dork doing it because I just read it somewhere else on the internet -- but I guess thats the fun of hyperlinks!
I definetly wish more of my friends that I invited to read the and join the blog would actually participate. I feel like I tell a lot of stories and keep people informed -- and this way they don't feel like they are left out of my circle. Now I pick up the phone to talk to them and now I have blog stories to tell them which they don't seem so interested in.
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